Freedom of BLEEP

Yesterday, President Obama announced that he would like to exempt small businesses from capital gains taxes for the next year to help them through the tough economic times.

How does this help small businesses? It doesn’t really. This is clearly a strategic maneuver to deceive feeble-minded Americans into believing that our Government is providing tax relief. And the Democrats know that they’ll get away with it since many Americans couldn’t define capital gains tax to save their own life!

Why encourage small businesses to invest in stocks and bonds if we want them to start hiring more workers? It’s not just a logical fallacy; it’s duplicitous trickery intended to avert our eyes from the many ways that Democrats are actually raising taxes on small businesses. Even the New York Times admits that Obama hasn’t brought much to the table for the small businesses of America.

How exactly are the democrats raising taxes on small business?

1.) Under the proposed health care legislation, employers with payrolls exceeding $250,000 will have to provide health care to employees or pay up to an 8% penalty tax. It’s important to emphasize this is based on payroll exceeding $250,000, not based on net profits exceeding $250,000. This is going to have a huge impact on many, many small businesses in America.

2.) In addition to the cost of providing insurance, a surtax of 5.4% will also be levied on some small businesses to pay for the new government-run health care system. Democrats argue that this will only effect 1.9% of small businesses, but these figures are misleading. They include sole proprietors (that don’t have any employees) as small businesses. It’s the successful businesses in the top 1.9% which produce the most jobs.

3.) Democrats have proposed a new tax to help pay for the war in Afghanistan. Again, this will be aimed at those “earning more than $200,000 or $250,000.”

4.) Democrats also plan to repeal of a form of inventory accounting that tends to reduce business taxes. This is a particularly sneaky way to raise taxes on small businesses without the general public noticing.

5.) Democrats have been pushing for mandates that will require investment partnerships to pay the regular income tax rate instead of the lower capital gains rate. Small business owners have spoken out against such reforms, yet Democrats passed this as part of a “Tax Relief” bill.

6.) Oh, and by the way, capital gains taxes are actually increasing by at least 33% for everyone in America, and up to 69% for small businesses. Sure, small businesses will be off the hook for one year, but in 2011 Obama will be increasing the base capital gains tax rate to 20% — and the 5.4% health care surtax will also apply to capital gains on top of that. So that’s a 69% capital gains tax increase for America’s job-producing small businesses.

Why are small businesses so important?

Here are just a few statistics taken from the US-SBA:

• Small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Small businesses employ over half of all private sector employees.
• Small businesses pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Small businesses have generated 64 percent of net new jobs.

Remember when President Obama promised the stimulus package would have an immediate effect? Well, the Associated Press reports that the counties hurting the most from job losses are actually getting the least immediate aid from the allocated funding. It’s hard to understand how hundreds of earmarks were considered more important than actually stimulating the economy.

Meanwhile, the budgeted deficit continues to grow. Now the White House is projecting a $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009 - four times the 2008 deficit.

The Obama Administration’s analysis also assumes our economy will be growing at a rate of 3.5 percent by the end of the year. The more realistic report by the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the gross domestic product will actually decline 3 percent this year, and increase only 2.9 percent next year.

Nevermind that, the Obama Administration is too busy explaining how nothing is ever their fault. But we already know that isn’t true.

The White House has also been busy publicizing that they have created 20,000 new jobs in the Pentagon. What they didn’t tell you is that they actually destroyed 11,000 private sector jobs in the process. Reuters reports:

“The remaining 11,000 new hires would come from the conversion to federal civilian slots of jobs that had been outsourced to contractors.”

Another problem is that many of the jobs created by the government are only temporary. 60,000 jobs were created for the 2010 census. In about a year these people will be jobless again, and economic data suggests unemployment will still be a huge problem at that time. But hey, that’s alright. After these workers are done skewing the census data, they’ll probably just go back to ACORN and cast votes for their new imaginary citizens.

About $4 billion of the stimulus package will be handed out to organizations like ACORN. This group of henchmen for the Democratic Party get in trouble almost every election for voter fraud. And they’ve been at it again.

In Las Vegas, ACORN is being charged on 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters. And these are directors being charged, not irresponsible underlings that the organization can sweep under the rug.

From coast to coast, ACORN has been creating fraudulent registrations and submitting fraudulent votes. How can they eligible for stimulus money (that was obviously intended for them)?

Simply because there is no accountability. Who is in charge of oversight for stimulus spending? Why, you are, of course! How are you supposed to do this? You can’t!

“The government website dedicated to the spending won’t have details on contracts and grants until October and may not be complete until next spring — halfway through the program, administration officials said.” Isn’t the government great?

The best part is that the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board blames the delay on their server - which doesn’t have enough data storage capacity. Is this brand new government department using a computer from the 80’s? A single gigabyte can easily store several hundred thousand pages of text. I suppose the next year will be spent migrating small sections of data to the new server using a 3.5 floppy disk.

Or perhaps more likely, the Transparency Board will spend the next year doing exactly what they were told to do. Nothing! So much for President Obama’s promise to scrutinize “every dime” of how the $787 billion stimulus package is spent.

During his last prime time press conference, President Obama said, “We inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit… That wasn’t me.”

Actually, he did play a part in it. While President Obama opposed the Iraq War, he sure didn’t have a problem funding it. In fact, he only voted against one bill that included money for the war. Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006 and during this time war spending continued to go up. President Obama also voted for the Wall Street bailout. Ultimately, it’s Congress that holds the purse strings of our country but he has refused to accept some responsibility. So next time he tries to blame his administration’s problems on someone else, just remember he might not be telling you the whole truth.

Obama’s Voting History:

May 2005: Congress approved an $82 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and international anti-terrorism efforts. Obama voted yes.

June 2006: Congress cleared a $94.5 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as provide aid to hurricane victims. Obama voted yes.

September 2006: Congress cleared a $448 billion Pentagon funding bill that included $70 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama voted yes.

April 2007: Congress cleared a $124 billion spending bill that provided $90 billion for war costs. Obama voted yes.

June 2008: Congress approved a measure to spend $162 billion for war costs as well as other domestic projects. Obama voted yes.

Source

Yesterday your tax dollars were hard at work.

Air Force One roared directly over New York City, followed closely by an F-16 fighter jet. Apparently Obama needed some new pictures for his website. The photo op caused widespread panic because the low-flying planes looked like a terrorist attack. The planes made several passes right by 9/11 Ground Zero.

The photo shoot wasn’t announced in advance and many office buildings in NYC were evacuated. Mayor Bloomberg said he is “furious,” citing that the event was ill-conceived and insensitive, and a waste of taxpayer money.

What was the carbon footprint of this photo shoot? Well the 747 gets almost 0.2 miles to the gallon while the F-16 uses more than 25 gallons a minute. I’d estimate about 5,000 gallons of fuel consumed just for these two crafts alone during the shoot. Obama’s rock star mentality is getting old.

Why didn’t the White House issue a press release in advance? We may never know. Incompetent press secretary Robert Gibbs couldn’t answer any questions. He said he doesn’t have time to keep track of stuff like this.

Why did it have to occur over ground zero? Well they wanted a shot of Air Force One by the Statue of Liberty. And apparently they haven’t heard of this new technology called Photoshop. It’s pretty cool.

Update: Apparently the Feds actually thought this would cause a panic and proceeded anyway.

In a very public manner, President Obama has promised to cut the federal budget by $100 million. This is equivalent to asking someone that makes $60,000 a year to save only $6. But our president calls it “tightening the belt” and he thinks you’re dumb enough to fall for it.

It’s great that he is cutting the budget, but this $100 million is only about 0.0028% of the budget. Borrowing for February’s stimulus package alone will cost about $100 million a day for the next decade. Furthermore, much of the “savings” he demanded from his cabinet are already under way and are included in the calculation (and the budget).

If you look closer, the legitimacy of speculated savings is more than questionable. Will buying multi-purpose office equipment (such as a combined copier, printer, and fax all in a single unit) really save the Homeland Security Department $2 million a year? Also, an estimated $52 million will be saved buying office supplies in bulk. You mean it took our government decades to realize this is possible? Next Obama will be telling us that the public sector is more efficient than the private sector. Oh wait, he already did tell us that.

Thanks for playing, Mr. President.

Tax dollars at work

Obama will be working to legalize all illegal aliens this year. This will give 12 million illegals an equal opportunity to pursue American jobs, and at a time when we already have millions of Americans looking for jobs. Is this his solution to the economic crisis?

Merely talking about this issue will probably create a huge influx of illegal immigration, making the situation worse than projected. Not only will Obama’s plan make it harder for Americans to find a job, but it will also cause lower wages. Between 1980 and 2000, illegal immigration reduced the annual earnings of US-born workers by an average of 4 percent.

Government expenditures will be an even bigger problem if aliens are legalized. Since illegal immigrants are generally among the lowest wage earners, they will be paying few taxes, if any. Yet they will receive all the benefits of US citizens: social security, health care, public education, and welfare. Not to mention the Obama “tax cuts” for people who don’t pay taxes. Legalizing aliens will be a huge drain on our economy (on top of Obama’s budgeted $9.3 trillion deficit).

And shouldn’t we consider the many individuals who have been waiting years to get into the United States legally? Since when do we reward those who violate the law?

Obama’s Power Grab, Part II

President Obama has altered the U.S. Government so that he will directly oversee the census in 2010. It’s important to consider why he would want this control, and why it violates the Constitution.

First, the census directly effects congressional redistricting. This can ultimately determine which political party a district favors. The first census after the American Revolution was taken in 1790 under Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to keep the census out of partisan hands. This is also one of the primary reason why the Department of Commerce was created in 1903. Expect gerrymandering to be much more prominent when 2010 comes around.

Second, the census determines how government funding is allocated. Everything from spending on schools to roads is dictated by the census.

Even though we have a Department of Commerce specifically dedicated to “gathering economic and demographic data for business and government decision-making,” Obama wants to oversee the census himself for inarticulate reasons. Starting to see why Obama’s first two picks for Commerce Secretary turned down the job? And remember, liberals have also allocated an extra $1 billion dollars to the census this year through the the porkulous package. You can sure change a lot with that kind of cash.

R.I.P.

Less than one week after passing the $787 billion stimulus bill, the Democrats have already unveiled another $410 billion spending bill to increase revenue for government programs.

Didn’t President Obama call for more fiscal responsibility during his speech at the Economic Summit on Monday? Apparently someone forgot to pass the memo - possibly the head of Obama’s National Economic Council who actually fell asleep during the conference!

According to the Associated Press, the new spending bill includes thousands of earmarks, pet projects, and other forms of pork barrel spending.

Recovery: A Laughing Matter?

When combined with funding from the “economic stimulus,” there has been an astronomical increase in spending on government programs. Where is the extra money going to come from?