Cut Spending, Just Not Mine

UPDATE: Speaking of mooching freeloaders who don’t want their money cut off. Check out the recent email received by Michelle Malkin.

I have no problem with people receiving benefits from the various federal programs. In fact, I get a monthly check from Uncle Sam as payment for my 20 years of military service. On top of that, I have a pretty decent medical program.

(For those who think it is FREE though, you are sadly mistaken. While it may be relatively inexpensive, I DO have to pay my family and myself. I have to find a doctor willing to take Tricare and I have a co-pay for each visit. Yes, I could save money by driving to a VA hospital, but…. well, no thanks.)

However, there is an argument that can be made that too much of a good thing is not quite as good as it originally seemed. If you continue to do something for people, how long before they stop even trying to do for themselves?

My liberal friends argue that not enough is done. There are poor people who are still not making it. To them, I ask, how much is enough? Have we not been having this War on Poverty since the 1960’s? What has it accomplished? Have we not poured BILLIONS into the Education system? What do we have to show for it? A lower standard of education that the rest of the world.

And the signs are now appearing that people are, in fact, content to live off of the public provisions. A recent poll shows that of those queried, 23% receive some sort of continued public financing. Now that may not sound like much, but extrapolating the numbers out to a national level, that means some 69 million folks fall into that group.

Of that, SIXTY-THREE (63) percent said that they were not willing to have any of their benefits cut if it meant helping to cut down the deficit including 33% who said NOT WILLING AT ALL. That means roughly 15 million folks would not allow a single penny to be taken back. Yet here we are, buried in a mountain of debt.

In a similar report (sorry I don’t have that link), job makers in the Detroit area actually had people asking them to hold the job open for them for a couple of weeks so that the UNEMPLOYED WORKER could finish his or her last few weeks of unemployment money. (And this, after having the benefits extended for over 99 weeks!!) What the hell??

If you cannot see the forest for the trees, then I don’t know what else to tell you. Ben Franklin had it more than right when he said that the best thing to do for a poor man is to make him uncomfortable in his poverty.

A helping hand up, yes. Continued hand outs, no more.

The revolution is at hand. Will you be a leader or a follower?

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Reading Is No Longer Fundamental

Not only do our congressional leaders NOT read the legislation put to them for a vote, now our political party of choice is hiring people to attack our thoughts and ideas…

…without ever having read the documents they were hired to debunk.

What am I talking about, you ask? It seems that some state Democrats in- yes, once again the great Northwest- Oregon hired an economist to slam and debunk the Republican alternative to the state budget. The problem is, this guy went on the stand and TESTIFIED against it without ever having read the plan.

You have to love it. If that is how things are supposed to work, I could spend hours a day arguing against pretty much everything I disagreed with. Who needs facts, when opinions and speculations are SO much better at proving I am right?

IDIOTS.

The revolution is at hand. Will you be a leader or a follower?

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The Real Obanomic Numbers

This post is targeted toward those for whom I originally started this blog. Most of them (us) are nowhere near the Obama target of $250K, so the whole raising of tax stuff does not affect us to any great extent.

I want to add a caveat, though, that when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to lapse in 2011, ALL of us with children will get affected, as the (now) $1000 credit per child (as a single example) will be reduced to pre-cut rates ($800).

So anyway, the top marginal rate is 35%. Pretty high, compared to my meager rate of about 15%. Obama plans to raise this to Clinton-era rates of 39.6% Again, that doesn’t seem like much, right? A meager 4.6%? I mean, a paltry $46 per $1000 made is forked over.

Recall though, that these are not the entire number. Check out the real scoop from a tax expert as reported by Michelle Malkin:

… while it may be true that under Obama the marginal effect is only 2, 4, or 6% (depending on what actually passes from his budget), I think the greater effect is the psychological line that Obama has so clearly drawn in the sand. If the tax rates are adjusted so that someone making 250,000 is taxed at 39.6%, if this person is self-employed, they are looking at a total tax rate of up to 61.4% on each dollar over $250,000. [61.4% = Federal Income Tax (39.6), State Rate (up to 10.3% in California), and self-employment tax rate (roughly 11.5% when you take into account your deduction for ½ of the self-employment tax)].

I am a tax accountant, don’t consider myself to be an idiot, and I am right in Obama’s income target range. I will be joining those looking to limit hours worked so as not to enter that 60% territory. Part of the motivation will be the self satisfaction of not contributing to the socialist cause.

So as he taxes those with high income (which by the way is not very high if you live in New York) and those people decide to stop working. So they cut jobs, cut profit, hurt the economy and then force those who cannot realistically cut enough profit to pay an even higher percentage of the tax. Recall that the top 2% of Americans pay the largest portion of the tax burden- now they will pay even more.

The revolution is at hand. Will you be a leader or a follower?

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Peter Schiff on Obama’s speech

Thanks to R. S. McCain for getting this (fuzzy) home video from Peter Schiff, the wizard who called the collapse a few years ago.

The Other McCain: Peter Schiff on Obama’s speech: ‘A total lack of understanding of basic economics’

The revolution is at hand. Will you be a leader or a follower?

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Keynesian Economics Explained

If you don’t know what Keynesian Economics is, let me break it down. Back in the 1930’s there was an economist who said that the reason we had a depression was that we did not spend ENOUGH.

This goes contrary to modern economists who say that FDR’s New Deal actually deepened and lengthened the Great Depression.

Of course, because Republicans were in power, and because the economy turned south, the current administration says that we cannot follow the old rules. We must be bold. We must spend MEGA money regardless of the short term deficit. In short, we must be Keynesian.

There is no talk, of course, about the notion that the liberals in congress strong-armed lenders into giving loans to very risky people. As a result, they inflated the housing market to the extreme and it all cam crashing down.

I want you to go watch this video, posted by our friends at the Jawa Report. It says it all, with regards to explaining Keynesian ideas and what is about to happen if we don’t put pressure on congress to stop this idiotic spending bill.

(WARNING: There three parts, each is long, and it includes the commercials… D’OH!)

God help us.

The revolution is at hand. Will you be a leader or a follower?

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