Bloodthirsty Liberal

Does this include NPR? Please?

Mitt Romney likes PBS, but says it’s time for the public broadcasting television network to stop relying on taxpayer funding and find private income sources instead.

“I think there will be things that we think are nice programs, and we’ll say to ourselves, is this program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?” Romney said in an interview with Time magazine’s Mark Halperin on Wednesday.

“I like PBS. I’d like my grandkids to be able to watch PBS,” the presumptive GOP nominee said. “But I’m not willing to borrow money from China and make my kids have to pay the interest on that, and my grandkids, over generations, as opposed to saying to PBS, look, you’re going to have to raise more money from charitable contributions or from advertising.”

I don’t have strong feelings about PBS, but I am beyond irritated with the constant bias against conservatives on NPR. It is outrageous and I don’t want to pay for it any longer.

- Aggie

To our America readers: want to feel proud?

Medical device manufacturing is one of the nation’s most dynamic and vibrant industries. The United States is the global leader in medical technology innovation, and it is one of the few major industries with a net trade surplus. This industry is responsible for more than 400,000 American jobs—and is indirectly responsible for almost two million more that supply and support this highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care. They include everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

As the old joke goes: coffee break’s over; everyone back on their heads.

Yet instead of protecting this paragon of American ingenuity and innovation, the Obama administration and Congress have viewed the industry as a cash cow from which they could milk profits to help pay for the president’s health law. So they added to the Affordable Care Act a 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that will take effect at the beginning of 2013.

This tax is especially pernicious because it is assessed on sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’ve manufactured medical devices and had sales of $1 million, after all your costs and expenses—everything from materials and labor to research and development—your profit was $100,000. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost 25% of your profits.

Many medical device companies have to ramp up sales before they become profitable. Due to the long, draconian and sometimes unpredictable regulatory process that must be negotiated before a product can be sold, it can take from $70 million to $100 million in total sales before these businesses make their first cent of profits. Nevertheless, they would have to pay the excise tax on their revenue.

The nation’s medical device industry is vulnerable. It is not comprised of behemoths: 80% of its companies have 50 or fewer employees, the very businesses we are relying on to turn the U.S. economy around. The new excise tax comes when regulatory delays and uncertainty are increasing, and as many device firms are shutting down or moving abroad to take advantage of the more favorable tax and regulatory climate in Europe. The tax will force companies to lay off employees, cut back on research and development, or diminish capital investment.

Another symbolic news story (see below): government can encourage private industry (often best by leaving it the hell alone), or it can prey on it. I’ll give you one guess.

I’m reminded of an episode of The Sopranos.

At the brokerage, Christopher is apologizing for the Monkey Boys’ behavior. Then he calls them into the office for a stern dressing-down…. They explain the concept of “pump-and-dump,” and how they’re pawning all the stock off on old ladies. It’s up to eighty, though, and they want to sell. Christopher teaches a little Racketeering 101, laying down the primary rule: “When you’re bleeding a guy, you don’t bleed him dry right away. You wait, so you can bleed him next week, and the week after.”… Christopher goes on to tell them, “If any more Porsches disappear, make it two towns over, and I want a taste.”

And we all know what happens when Christopher doesn’t get his “taste”.

Your government at work.

I wonder if they are taking their companies with them?

Rich Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship rose sevenfold since UBS AG (UBSN) whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld triggered a crackdown on tax evasion four years ago.

About 1,780 expatriates gave up their nationality at U.S. embassies last year, up from 235 in 2008, according to Andy Sundberg, secretary of Geneva’s Overseas American Academy, citing figures from the government’s Federal Register. The embassy in Bern, the Swiss capital, redeployed staff to clear a backlog as Americans queued to relinquish their passports.

The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside, is searching for tax cheats in offshore centers, including Switzerland, as the government tries to curb the budget deficit. Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport.

“It started with the fallout from UBS and non-U.S. banks feeling it’s too risky to deal with Americans abroad,” said Matthew Ledvina, a U.S. tax lawyer at Anaford AG in Zurich. “It will increase because Fatca will require banks to track down people, some of whom will make voluntary disclosures before renouncing their citizenship.”

Renunciations are higher in Switzerland because American expatriates expect extra scrutiny of their affairs after the UBS case and as the U.S. probes 11 other Swiss financial firms for aiding offshore tax evasion, said Martin Naville, head of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich.
Absurd Tax Laws

“Most of the real cross-border tax troubles have been around Switzerland,” Naville said. “We’ve got absurd tax laws coming into force because of the activities of certain people who tried to hide money.”

During a 10-minute renunciation ceremony in a booth with bullet-proof glass windows, embassy staff ask exiting Americans whether they are acting voluntarily and understand the implications of giving up their passports. They pay a fee of $450 to renounce and may incur an “exit tax” on unrealized capital gains if their assets exceed $2 million or their average annual U.S. tax bill is more than $151,000 during the past five years.

They receive a certificate within three months, telling them they are no longer American citizens and entitled to the services and protection of the U.S. government.

It sounds extreme to me, but Switzerland is a beautiful place.

The Secret Service, GSA, now ICE:

In a brazen criminal scheme to defraud taxpayers, one of the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to helping embezzle more than $500,000 from the federal government.

Over three years, James Woosley and at least five other ICE employees scammed the agency by fabricating expenses for trips that were never taken and for hotel, rental car and restaurant expenses that did not exist, according to court records.

Clearly, what we need is another agency to oversee ICE and other agencies. And maybe another agency to oversee that one. Hire a few $100k management types—heck, more than a few—and we’ll be good to go.

Or maybe not:

Since January 2009, the Obama administration has added 144,700 employees to a federal payroll that reached $433 billion in 2011. That net increase excludes postal employees, uniformed military and census workers.

While the Congressional Budget Office estimates that average federal salaries are only about 2 percent higher than those for similar private-sector employees, average benefits exceed private-sector levels by a whopping 48 percent. Even with adjustments for education level, work experience and occupation, the CBO found total compensation including salary and benefits was 16 percent higher for federal employees than for comparable private-sector positions.

…

We have an aging workforce in which 459,016 people earned at least $100,000 in average base salary last year. These rates are not sustainable on our current budget trajectory.

…

In addition to realigning salary and benefits with the private sector, another relatively painless way to begin addressing the turnover problem is to fire federal employees who are delinquent on their federal tax obligations. In 2010, some 98,291 federal civilian employees refused to pay their federal income taxes.

This subset of employees owed approximately $1 billion in unpaid federal taxes — an amount that has increased nearly 72 percent since 2004.

…

The U.S. Postal Service has been attempting to make these necessary changes over the past five years. Postal officials are taking important steps to right-size the workforce, consolidate assets and innovate their way to profitability.

…

USPS has 157,000 career employees eligible for regular retirement, and it expects an additional 100,000 to become retirement-eligible by 2015. This creates a rare opportunity to right-size the aging postal workforce through retirements.

A similar approach could help shrink and rebalance the rest of the federal workforce.

Ha, that’s pretty funny. What’s he smoking?

Mitt Romney should be able to win this race with one wife tied behind his back.

Stephen King, of course. Crude, violent, disturbing, and fairly well-written. (You were expecting Jane Austen?)

Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”

Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Cut a check and shut up, they said.

If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.

Tired of hearing about it, they said.

Tough [bleep] for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their [bleeps] with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.

Beyond what we already know about Stephen King (which has been confirmed here), we also know he’s never met a rich woman (one of the expurgated words being a rather common slang word for the male reproductive organ).

But of course King can talk about it: this is America. And he puts his money where his mouth is:

My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (jaws of life are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Umm, says who? And even if we agree that it doesn’t, who is Mr. King to confiscate (or call for the confiscation of) another person’s wealth (for all you rich dames out there)?

What charitable 1-percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

If you’re so concerned about America’s “staggering” war debts and its sick and poor, Steve, what are you doing pi**ing your money away on arts organizations? The Orono Gilbert & Sullivan Society may appreciate your largesse, but how many jaws of life have they purchased with it?

But seriously, Steve, you would rather the government take your $4 million than spend it how you see fit? What if some of it went to the GSA’s party lifestyle or Michelle Obama’s lavish vacations? You think that’s better than local libraries and schools?

And the rich do pay their fair share—so much more. I don’t feeling like pulling up the relevant Treasury chart that shows that the richer you are, the more of the federal income tax you pay as a percentage of the population. In recent years, the top 1% pay between 35-40% of federal income tax, while the bottom 50% pay between 2 and 3.5% The disparity between the top one-tenth of one percent is even greater:

Since 2001, the IRS has also been presenting data on a small subset of the top 1 percent, the top 0.1 percent (the top 10 percent of the top 1 percent). In 2009, this top 0.1 percent filed 137,982 tax returns, reporting 7.8 percent of all adjusted gross income earned and paying approximately 17.1 percent of the nation’s federal individual income taxes.

That’s right: a group about the size of a standing-room only capacity crowd for the University of Michigan Wolverine football team pays over one-sixth of the federal income tax, even though they earn less than half that amount proportionately.

And Stphen King wants them turned upside down and shaken by the heels so he can feel good about pot holes. We should be encouraging more philanthropy, not less. More capitalism, not more communism. If that’s not too scary for you, Steve.

It’s the taxes, stupid:

Addressing the percentage of taxpayers who do not pay any income tax, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said these Americans have “skin in the game” since “they pay payroll taxes,” adding, “I wish they would earn more so they can pay more.”

“Well, you know, they do pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes. And this is a tactic that the other side uses to make it sound as if these people are not paying taxes. They are paying taxes. They do have skin in the game. And I think that that should be respected,” said Pelosi at the Capitol Thursday.

“I wish they would earn more so they can pay more.”

Doesn’t that say it all? Instead of wishing for people to do well so that they can take care of their families and leave the rest of us alone, Democrat policy is to wait for them to fatten up and harvest them.

And what does it say about our tax system that both sides can be right? Poor people don’t pay federal income tax (when almost everyone else does), yet they do pay other taxes (if they work). It’s a shell game. Simplify, simplify, simplify—and let us see where the money’s coming from and where it’s going.

The UN supports them:

The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined by Fox News.

The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, “a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.”

Oh yeah, we all want the UN to shift the way we think and act.

God forbid:

Among the proposals on how the “challenges can and must be addressed,” according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

–More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, ” “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.

–New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020.

…

–Further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use.”

…

–Major global social spending programs, including a “social protection floor” and “social safety nets” for the world’s most vulnerable social groups for reasons of “equity.”

–Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution—including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries.”

As if that weren’t enough, how’s this for a kicker?

–A guarantee that if those sweeping benefits weren’t enough, more would be granted.

Even in instituting massive global socialism (administered by the UN, of course), the UN reserves the right to seize even more sovereignty if their putsch proves ineffective. (No way!)

Never forget, all such proposals (including ObamaCare) are about seizing power only.

Do as I say… yeah, that’s pretty much it:

You know how it works here in Massachusetts. If you want to put your money where your liberal mouth is, all you have to do is check Box 22 on the state income tax form and then you can pay at the old, higher 5.85 percent rate.

It’s for the children, don’t you know. And the heroin dealers of Roxbury who need bail money.

According to the DOR, as of yesterday 2.78 million Massachusetts residents had filed 2011 tax returns, and exactly 773 opted to pay at the higher rate. Altogether the 773 paid an extra $60,181, which means their average income was approximately $15,000.

I called the [Elizabeth] Warren campaign yesterday for some clarification. Did she or did she not pay at the higher rate? Hours later, they sent back a statement that began, “Scott Brown takes care of oil companies …” Thanks for clearing that up, Granny. The answer is no.

For all the liberal windbaggery around these parts, 773 voluntary contributors out of 2.78 million taxpayers seems awfully small, don’t you think? Less than 0.03% small. And evidently none of the big spenders was actually rich (averaging about eighty bucks in voluntary contributions).

But that doesn’t stop some people:

Just the other day, some of the Beautiful People of Massachusetts went down to D.C. to push for the Buffett Rule. These moonbats modestly call themselves “Patriotic Millionaires.” Yesterday, I tried to find out how many Patriotic Millionaires had actually done anything other than flap their jaws about “tax fairness.”

Left a voicemail message for Philippe Villers. Not returned. Sent an email to an organization where Paul Egerman is a director. No response. Couldn’t get an address for Arnold Hiatt, whom Wikipedia describes as a “voice calling for money to get out of politics,” which must be why he contributed a mere $500,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1996.

Finally, I got through to Patriotic Millionaire Robert S. Bowditch Jr. I explained how he could check Box 22 and pay more for the most vulnerable members of society, etc.

“I don’t know about this provision you’re talking about.”

I interpret that to mean he’s not one of the 773 who actually paid higher taxes.

“My answer is that it does no good,” Bowditch said. “Taxes are not a charitable donation. It’s a decision you make collectively.”

Yeah, but you went to Washington to push for higher taxes and yet you won’t pay them yourself voluntarily. You talk the talk, why not walk the walk?

“I am perfectly willing to walk the walk if everyone else does.”

By the way, Bowditch has given $2,500 to Granny Warren. They agree on so many things — everybody should pay more taxes, except them.

Why would it do no good? His money’s green, isn’t it?

“It’s a decision you make collectively.” He’s not shy about the word, is he? “Collectively,” as in a collective. Yet he won’t pay what he’s demanding of others, even when the option is available to him. The only countries in which such beliefs were considered “patriotic” were East Germany and a few of its Soviet bloc cronies.

See what I’m saying?

The title is even more of an oxymoron than you can imagine:

When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

Liberals often point to the welfare states of Scandinavia as an alternative to the stricter free market economies.

Yeah, right:

‘Sweden was a textbook case of European economic sclerosis. Very high taxes and huge regulatory burden.’ An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Sweden on the road to balanced budgets, and Borg was determined the 2007 crash would not stop him cutting the size of government.

‘Everybody was told “stimulus, stimulus, stimulus”,’ he says — referring to the EU, IMF and the alphabet soup of agencies urging a global, debt-fuelled spending splurge. Borg, an economist, couldn’t work out how this would help. ‘It was surprising that Europe, given what we experienced in the 1970s and 80s with structural unemployment, believed that short-term Keynesianism could solve the problem.’ Non-economists, he says, ‘might have a tendency to fall for those kinds of messages’.

Oh my, whoever could he mean?

He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. The last bit was the most unpopular, but for Borg, economic recovery starts with entrepreneurs. If cutting taxes for the rich encouraged risk-taking, then it had to be done. ‘In most cases, the company would not have been created without the owner,’ he says. ‘There would be no Ikea without [Ingvar] Kamprad. We would not have Tetra-Pak without [Ruben] Rausing. They are probably the foremost entrepreneurs we have had in the last few decades, and both moved out of Sweden.’

But they were not rich, I say, when they were starting out. ‘No, but they were becoming rich. If you have a high wealth tax and an inheritance tax, people emigrate because it becomes too costly to own a company. Ownership is a production factor. Entrepreneurs are a production factor. Yes, these people are rich and you can obviously argue that we want to encourage social cohesion. But it is also problematic if you drive out entrepreneurs from your country, because they are the source of job creation.’

For pete’s sakes, Obamabots, even Sweden has wised up. Obama’s alleged smarts are anything but—and they’re forty years out of date. He sounds like the Ramparts magazines of my youth. He is President Bell-Bottom, the Sideburn-in-Chief of the United States.

Aggie’s three-word summation of the state we’re in.

Mark Steyn goes on at greater length—but reaches the same conclusion:

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the “war on women,” the Republican theocrats’ confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week’s bit of ham-handed misdirection was “the Buffett Rule,” a not-so-disguised capital-gains-tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as exercised about this as his public effusions would suggest, I’d be in favor of repealing the prohibition on Bills of Attainder, and the old boy could sleep easy at night. But instead every other American “millionaire” will be subject to the new rule — because, as President Obama said this week, it “will help us close our deficit.”

…

According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean-counters who project that on Obama’s current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama’s Buffett Rule will raise — stand well back — $3.2 billion per year. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit.

…

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama’s current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden?

…

For what Obama’s spending, there aren’t enough of them, or us, or “the rich” — and there never will be. There is only one Warren Buffett. He is the third-wealthiest person on the planet. The first is a Mexican, and beyond the reach of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Buffett is worth $44 billion. If he donated the entire lot to the government of the United States, they would blow through it within four and a half days. Okay, so who’s the fourth-richest guy? He’s French. And the fifth guy’s a Spaniard. Number six is Larry Ellison. He’s American, but that loser is only worth $36 billion. So he and Buffett between them could keep the United States government going for a week. The next-richest American is Christy Walton of Walmart, and she’s barely a semi-Buffett. So her $25 billion will see you through a couple of days of the second week. There aren’t a lot of other semi-Buffetts, but, if you scrounge around, you can rustle up some hemi-demi-semi-Buffetts: If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for a year.

Even an entertaining thought experiment like this almost misses the point: confiscation. We were founded as a free society for which taxes were a reasonable expense for the common wealth; Obama is leading us by the hand toward a state that owns the wealth and leaves us with what it sees fit. As reader Judi reminded us yesterday, everything this man does, from tax demagoguery to health care, is about consolidating power.

When he’s not talking up his buddy Warren, the Half-Millennium Man has been staggering around demonizing Paul Ryan’s plan, which would lead, he says, to the end of the weather service, air-traffic control, national parks, law enforcement, and drinkable water. Given what’s at stake, you might think then that the president would have an alternative plan. But he has none, save for his proposal to pay off the 2011 federal deficit by the year 2526. The Obama No-Plan plan means the end of everything. That really ought to be the only slogan the Republicans need this fall:

What’s yourplan?

And all you hear are crickets chirping.

We know what that sounds like.