OBAMA SOAKS THE RICH: CHURCHES, DAY CARE, HOMELESS SHELTERS
President Obama’s glib assertion that his reduction in tax deductions will not reduce donations is absurd. His pathetic defense at his press conference – that he would still give a $100 dollar check to charity even if he only got $11 less of tax deduction from it was both disingenuous and beside the point.
And his comment that his reduced deduction would only impact one or two percent of the nation misses the point that it is these folks who are doing almost half of the donating.
In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, four million taxpayers had adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. They comprised 3% of the tax returns, made 31% of the income, but donated 44% of all charitable contributions. Together, they provided charity with $81 billion in that year.
MARK LEVIN’S TIMELY REMINDER
In more normal times, we would not need Mark R. Levin’s treatise Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. We would know which side to be on and the points in his Manifesto would be, well, manifest.
But in this day, when a socialist sits in the White House, committed to expanding what Levin calls the “soft tyranny” of government regulation to every aspect of our economic and corporate life, we all need to read and remember what Levin writes in his new book.
Get Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
Levin defines, again for us, what it means to be free and in the private sector. Why do we need this reminder? Don’t we all remember from the Reagan days?
OBAMA’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU
Published on TheHill.com on March 23, 2009
Does President Obama truly believe that he can castigate and condemn Wall Street on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and then secure its cooperation on the other days of the week?
Does he not understand that when he ignites a public furor over AIG bonuses and then incites Congress to pass a punitive tax, he sends shivers down the spines of every other corporate executive who makes a lot of money?
Does he seriously believe that Wall Street investors will not worry that their winnings, should they join the Treasury as partners in risky investments, would be subject to public abuse, publicity and confiscatory taxation?
THE FED’S FUTILE MOVE
Published in the New York Post on March 19, 2009
In an effort to promote liquidity and boost the economy, the Federal Reserve yesterday announced plans to grow the money supply by another 50 percent to 60 percent. This ignores the profound observation of Gen. George Patton: “You can’t push a string.”
When the Fed expands the money supply, it doesn’t pass out $100 bills on Broadway. It gives lines of credit to banks and other financial intermediaries to generate some money and also buys up Treasury bills in circulation to pump out more cash.
GOP TAKES LEAD IN GENERIC BALLOT
The latest Rasmussen poll shows a Republican lead in the generic congressional ballot for the first time since at least April of 2007. These surveys, conducted weekly, have consistently shown a strong Democratic lead. Now the Dems have lost their lead thanks to the socialist policies of their misguided president.
To Republicans who wonder if America has a future, there is a message: We are a democracy, and in 2010, we can turn this mess around.
OBAMA FEELS HEAT IN POLLS
Published on TheHill.com on March 17, 2008
He may not be paying much attention to the stock market, where $11 trillion of pensions, investments and 401(k)s have been destroyed, but you can be sure that President Obama is paying attention to the polls showing diminishing support for his policies.
Of course, in presidential polling, all numbers are not equally important. Obama got 52 percent of the national vote. So when his approval drops, as it has, from 65 percent on Inauguration Day to 56 percent now (according to Rasmussen), he is playing with house money. Most of those who are coming to negative conclusions about his administration didn’t vote for him in the first place.
BOGGLED BAM – CAN PRESIDENT GET JOB DONE?
Published in the New York Post on March 16, 2009
The furor over the huge federal spending under President Obama – a $1.75 trillion deficit, 13 percent – obscures an even more basic question: Does he know what he is doing?
That is, does he know how to do anything other than spend?
His stimulus package, of course, took no special ability: He left the details to Democrats in Congress. But his two other major initiatives – his banking – and mortgage-relief plans – are both flawed and unlikely to solve their respective problems.
Indeed, they’re so wide of the mark as to prompt questions not of Obama’s ideology but of his basic competence.
PHONY MORTGAGE PLAN
Published on TheHill.com on March 10, 2009
President Obama and his big spenders are moving quickly, to the relief of those who are facing foreclosure on their mortgages. But the program they are offering will do nothing for those most in need.
In the fine print, Obama’s plan provides no relief for any homeowner whose mortgage exceeds the total value of his home. But these folks are the ones who have been conned into taking sub-prime mortgages so loaded with brokerage commissions, interest rate subsidies, bank fees and lawyer and title-company charges that the amount of the mortgage has ballooned. These high mortgage amounts, coupled with declining property values, have turned about 20 percent of American mortgages upside down, so that the debt exceeds the value of the property.
PELOSI WOULD MUZZLE TALK RADIO
Just as Eileen McGann and I predicted in our book, Fleeced, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pushing an amendment in Congress that would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest,” according to CBS news.
This measure is far more dangerous than the Fairness Doctrine, since it goes not only to programming but to the personnel a station employs, the members of its board and its ownership structure. Pelosi is trying not to muzzle talk radio but to take it over!
COMING NEXT YEAR: OBAMA’S INFLATION
Published on TheHill.com on March 3, 2009
In the last five months, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the money supply in the United States has increased by 271 percent. It has almost tripled.
Have car sales tripled? Home purchases? Consumer spending? Corporate investment? Not only have they not tripled, they have all declined more sharply than they have since at least the recession of 1981-82, and perhaps since the Great Depression.
So where is the money? If it isn’t being spent, where is it?
