Let's be serious about corporate taxes. America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. The world! That's outrageous. But even more outrageous is the argument that, "Well, it's not really that high, because companies exploit the loopholes, so it's really much lower than that."
Really?
With 17,000 pages of tax code, do you really think there are loads of loopholes being exploited each year? At best, those loopholes are the "gray areas" that aren't perfectly explained. Some are willing to gamble on those gray areas...probably those such as Wal-Mart, General Electric, Exxon Mobile...the kind that can pay an attorney to handle their affairs if they are audited.
But the majority of businesses in this country are small businesses. In fact, Small Businesses represent over 95% of our economy. Most of these people are good, hardworking, honest people. They don't have the time or inclination to play fast and loose with the "gray areas". There are some selfish and greedy businesses, for certain, that will gamble, take risks, and press their luck with the "gray areas" of the tax code. But those people don't represent the majority of businesses, by far.
So when you hear someone say that America's extremely high corporate tax rate isn't real, that it's much lower due to exploits...don't be afraid to punch holes in their argument. They will eventually fall back to the GEs and Wal-Marts as the example...and if they think that it's ok for the majority of small businesses to be taxed higher because Wal-Mart can afford to skirt the rules, then your talking to someone that likely doesn't believe in capitalism, which as my previous post explained, is not failing.
Lower taxes are the key, and enforcement for those who skirt the laws. Or we could just do the simple, and probably smartest, thing and move to the Fair Tax or a flat tax.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Don't Believe it, and Don't Let Them Wear You Down. Be A Guardian of Liberty.
The Government, meaning the President all the way down to the Representatives, is trying to wear you down...trying to make you submit...to give up and let them make all the decisions without our input. Don't Let Them.
When they speak of Capitalism being the problem, or the economy being too complicated for you to understand, or there being no problem with deficit spending. Don't believe it. Lies. Dirty rotten lies!
Capitalism is not the problem...it is not at fault...at least the truest form of capitalism. We haven't run on true capitalism for some time now, but for the bulk of the past century it has been close enough to the truest form of capitalism. Capitalism is not a belief, it's not an ideology...it just is. It's a system. A system proven to work over the bulk of the past 200 years. Yet some would try to make you believe it's suddenly broken. Hogwash!
The problem is not capitalism...it's people. Think of capitalism as the vehicle of the economy. Vehicles don't kill people...people driving the vehicle do. Likewise Capitalism isn't the problem, the natural emotion of humans known as greed is the problem. We can't prevent greed, we can only monitor it to keep it in check.
Another statement used to blunt your complaints is that the economy is way too difficult for you to understand. Those who say that are trying to dull your senses...trying to make you feel dumb. Certainly the US economy is multi-faceted, multi-layered, and even complicated...but not too complicated for you to follow. The same principles that you use to govern your own personal monetary policy still hold true in the larger picture of the US economy. Those principles are even the driving force of the economy, with the multi-faceted, multi-layered, complicated additions figuring in, to a lesser degree.
The economy still needs to earn more than it spends. It needs to save for an emergency, it needs to maintain only a reasonable amount of debt, and it needs to prevent one specific aspect of the budget from representing too large of a percentage of the overall obligations. When it doesn't, things go bad....just like if you spend more than you make, or if your debt is more than the value of your assets, or if your house payment is 40% of your income. Murphy's law is universal...it just takes more time to reach some than others.
You know in your heart, that deficit spending doesn't work. You're always chasing the unattainable. You can't spend your way out of things without changing your habits, right? You know those people who were on the verge of bankruptcy. They though, "If I can just make more money." Then they get a higher paying job, begin to get caught up, only to buy a house boat 6 months later and put themselves in the exact same predicament of being on the verge of bankruptcy.
IT DOESN'T WORK!!! You have to change your habits that got you there in the first place, not keep doing what you've been doing, only to the nth degree.
They'll tell you that all the economists agree, ignoring the hundreds that take out newspaper ads saying they disagree. They'll tell you that they had to do something, ignoring the fact that it didn't work in the Great Depression. Did you know that FDR's Treasury Secretary(I believe that's who it was...someone very close to him) admitted that all their spending didn't work???
You know we're this close to another depression. Nationalizing the banks isn't the answer. A huge government database of our health records isn't the answer.
Don't let them tell you otherwise. Don't let them wear you down. Don't let them force you to submit. Be a Guardian of Liberty. Our country, and the founding fathers who left this legacy to us, are counting on you to be strong. We all don't serve in the military...but we all must serve our country. Be determined in your correspondence with your representatives. That is your service to your country.
When they speak of Capitalism being the problem, or the economy being too complicated for you to understand, or there being no problem with deficit spending. Don't believe it. Lies. Dirty rotten lies!
Capitalism is not the problem...it is not at fault...at least the truest form of capitalism. We haven't run on true capitalism for some time now, but for the bulk of the past century it has been close enough to the truest form of capitalism. Capitalism is not a belief, it's not an ideology...it just is. It's a system. A system proven to work over the bulk of the past 200 years. Yet some would try to make you believe it's suddenly broken. Hogwash!
The problem is not capitalism...it's people. Think of capitalism as the vehicle of the economy. Vehicles don't kill people...people driving the vehicle do. Likewise Capitalism isn't the problem, the natural emotion of humans known as greed is the problem. We can't prevent greed, we can only monitor it to keep it in check.
Another statement used to blunt your complaints is that the economy is way too difficult for you to understand. Those who say that are trying to dull your senses...trying to make you feel dumb. Certainly the US economy is multi-faceted, multi-layered, and even complicated...but not too complicated for you to follow. The same principles that you use to govern your own personal monetary policy still hold true in the larger picture of the US economy. Those principles are even the driving force of the economy, with the multi-faceted, multi-layered, complicated additions figuring in, to a lesser degree.
The economy still needs to earn more than it spends. It needs to save for an emergency, it needs to maintain only a reasonable amount of debt, and it needs to prevent one specific aspect of the budget from representing too large of a percentage of the overall obligations. When it doesn't, things go bad....just like if you spend more than you make, or if your debt is more than the value of your assets, or if your house payment is 40% of your income. Murphy's law is universal...it just takes more time to reach some than others.
You know in your heart, that deficit spending doesn't work. You're always chasing the unattainable. You can't spend your way out of things without changing your habits, right? You know those people who were on the verge of bankruptcy. They though, "If I can just make more money." Then they get a higher paying job, begin to get caught up, only to buy a house boat 6 months later and put themselves in the exact same predicament of being on the verge of bankruptcy.
IT DOESN'T WORK!!! You have to change your habits that got you there in the first place, not keep doing what you've been doing, only to the nth degree.
They'll tell you that all the economists agree, ignoring the hundreds that take out newspaper ads saying they disagree. They'll tell you that they had to do something, ignoring the fact that it didn't work in the Great Depression. Did you know that FDR's Treasury Secretary(I believe that's who it was...someone very close to him) admitted that all their spending didn't work???
You know we're this close to another depression. Nationalizing the banks isn't the answer. A huge government database of our health records isn't the answer.
Don't let them tell you otherwise. Don't let them wear you down. Don't let them force you to submit. Be a Guardian of Liberty. Our country, and the founding fathers who left this legacy to us, are counting on you to be strong. We all don't serve in the military...but we all must serve our country. Be determined in your correspondence with your representatives. That is your service to your country.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
And the Praise is GONE...Ellsworth changes vote.
The respect is waining, as this man can't seem to take a stance and stick to it. "Pay as you go" is his mantra. Yet there's votes to raise the debt ceiling, votes for TARP, and now a vote for this new Bailout package disguised under the moniker of Stimulus Package. That's not even counting the man voting to shirk his own responsibility and give unlimited powers to the Treasury Secretary Paulson. Under the constitution, it is the responsibility of Congress to direct taxpayer funds...not one unelected official. This reason is simple...it's the same reason that's it's ridiculous that President Obama moved the census under the White House rather than in congress where it was. That reason is the reporting....the transparency that President Obama so eloquently speaks of, yet acts in odds with. Congress is required to disclose the reporting of how taxpayer funds are directed. However, Treasury Secretary as well as the White House, has no obligation to report everything to the public as Congress does. This is self-evident in the fact that no one knows where the first half of the TARP funds went, including Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, or so he says...again he's under no legal obligation to report these things.
Yet I was holding out hope...and I need to make it my responsibility not only to call my representatives when they do something I don't like, but also when they do something I do like.
Unfortunately, in this case, all it took was a lunch with the President and a few phone calls from some retirees to sway his decision.
So where does this leave us? Where will we get this money that we are throwing down the crapper?
Most will tell you that we are going to borrow it. Borrow it from whom??? Not China...who said, "We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do."
Not Russia...Putin is calling for a different global monetary policy and buying gold bars as quick as possible.
So that leaves Perhaps Japan and the Saudis. By the way...aren't we trying to get off their oil? Why would we go into debt to them??
OR...are we going to print it? Print trillions of dollars that can do absolutely nothing but devalue our dollar.
Has anyone of Capitol Hill thought this far in advance? Or is everyone too busy trying to "do something" to look past the next 20 minutes?
Who knows what the answer is. All I know is that our representatives in Washington know nothing of history and are completely shortsighted.
Yet I was holding out hope...and I need to make it my responsibility not only to call my representatives when they do something I don't like, but also when they do something I do like.
Unfortunately, in this case, all it took was a lunch with the President and a few phone calls from some retirees to sway his decision.
So where does this leave us? Where will we get this money that we are throwing down the crapper?
Most will tell you that we are going to borrow it. Borrow it from whom??? Not China...who said, "We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do."
Not Russia...Putin is calling for a different global monetary policy and buying gold bars as quick as possible.
So that leaves Perhaps Japan and the Saudis. By the way...aren't we trying to get off their oil? Why would we go into debt to them??
OR...are we going to print it? Print trillions of dollars that can do absolutely nothing but devalue our dollar.
Has anyone of Capitol Hill thought this far in advance? Or is everyone too busy trying to "do something" to look past the next 20 minutes?
Who knows what the answer is. All I know is that our representatives in Washington know nothing of history and are completely shortsighted.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
We Get What We Deserve...Honorless Government.
It was supposed to be a dawning of a new age...a new way to do things. Transparent. No conflicts. No lobbyists. A change.
And yet...it's all the same.
A Secretary of State who has legitimate questions of conflict of interest. Countries who many not have our best interests at heart made, and may continue to make, donations to her husband's foundation with the expectation of special favors of some sort. A potential conflict of interest that may put our country in unnecessary danger.
A Treasury Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes...not once, or twice, or thrice, but four times. A man who is supposed to be a brilliant economist. A man who worked for an agency that not only paid for his taxes, but sent him a check specifically describing what the check was for....that required the man to sign a ledger saying that he understood they were for taxes. A man whom after getting caught not paying taxes once, continued to not pay taxes. A man who only paid his taxes, with no interest or penalties, AFTER he realized that he would be a nominee for Treasury Secretary. Did we mention that this man will be in charge of the IRS...the agency responsible for collecting taxes?
A Health and Human Services Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes. A guy who didn't pay his medicare taxes. This is a man who is going to run Medicare!
A Secretary of Labor who was a member of a prominent pro-labor group who is pushing the Employee Free of Choice Act, which is legislation which will ban an employee's right to secret ballots. When questioned about her stance on this legisiation, the Secretary of Labor elect stated that she wasn't prepared to answer that question in public, but would answer it privately. How ironic.
And in a final kicker, thus far, the aforementioned Treasury Secretary promptly named as his Chief of Staff, a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.
Is this what we were promised? Is it ok to look the other way if "these are the best people for the job"?? When will the government be accountable to say what they mean and mean what they say???
The answer, of course, is never. They will never be held to the same standard that normal Americans are. Unless normal Americans stand up and demand that they are held to the same standard, our Government will continue to take advantage, go back on their word, and further disenfranchise our nation.
And yet...it's all the same.
A Secretary of State who has legitimate questions of conflict of interest. Countries who many not have our best interests at heart made, and may continue to make, donations to her husband's foundation with the expectation of special favors of some sort. A potential conflict of interest that may put our country in unnecessary danger.
A Treasury Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes...not once, or twice, or thrice, but four times. A man who is supposed to be a brilliant economist. A man who worked for an agency that not only paid for his taxes, but sent him a check specifically describing what the check was for....that required the man to sign a ledger saying that he understood they were for taxes. A man whom after getting caught not paying taxes once, continued to not pay taxes. A man who only paid his taxes, with no interest or penalties, AFTER he realized that he would be a nominee for Treasury Secretary. Did we mention that this man will be in charge of the IRS...the agency responsible for collecting taxes?
A Health and Human Services Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes. A guy who didn't pay his medicare taxes. This is a man who is going to run Medicare!
A Secretary of Labor who was a member of a prominent pro-labor group who is pushing the Employee Free of Choice Act, which is legislation which will ban an employee's right to secret ballots. When questioned about her stance on this legisiation, the Secretary of Labor elect stated that she wasn't prepared to answer that question in public, but would answer it privately. How ironic.
And in a final kicker, thus far, the aforementioned Treasury Secretary promptly named as his Chief of Staff, a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.
Is this what we were promised? Is it ok to look the other way if "these are the best people for the job"?? When will the government be accountable to say what they mean and mean what they say???
The answer, of course, is never. They will never be held to the same standard that normal Americans are. Unless normal Americans stand up and demand that they are held to the same standard, our Government will continue to take advantage, go back on their word, and further disenfranchise our nation.
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