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.

With a smug grin on his face, President Obama walked up to the podium at the Tribal Nations Conference to address the nation about the massacre at Fort Hood. He opened with a lighthearted “shout out” to Joe Medicine Crow. After using almost three minutes to talk about how he is working to improve conditions for Native Americans, he finally mentions Fort Hood.

Obama giving a shout-out before Fort Hood speech

Talk about a real class act. He spent so much time paying lip service to a slice of his electorate that many viewers thought the wrong clip was playing. Where’s Michael Moore and his stopwatch now?

Even NBC described Obama’s behavior as a display of “frightening insensitivity.” When the President finally did begin to address the Fort Hood tragedy, he still had to read his comments. Seemingly no heartfelt emotions; only the disingenuous teleprompter.

President Obama continues to say, “[U]nder our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” This is such deceitful statement that even some of his Democratic colleagues are beginning to call him out on it:

“If you take a look at H.R. 3200 as originally written, abortion was never mentioned. It was the amendment process that added this amendment which now makes public funding for abortion available,” says Bart Stupak (D-MI). He continued, “If your talking about 3200, technically he’s correct. But you all know about the Capps amendment. You all know it’s become part of the bill. [...] So I was disappointed when the President got up there last week and said no funding for abortion is found in the bill. That is not true.”

As clearly stated in the Capps Amendment to H.R. 3200, “The public health insurance option shall provide coverage for [...] Abortions for which public funding is allowed.” Specifically this includes abortions performed in cases or rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.

So already the President is lying, and it gets worse. The Capps Amendment would also allow private plans purchased with federal subsidies (”affordability credits” for low-income families and workers) to cover other kinds of abortion. So now people will be able to use federal money to obtain private insurance that will pay for their abortion - even abortions where direct federal funding would be prohibited.

The Capps Amendment leaves it to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to decide which other kinds of abortions can be covered. And if you look at the track record of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, this is bad news for pro-life supporters. As the governor of Kansas, she vetoed anti-abortion legislation in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2008, including Senate Bill 389 which aimed to strengthen laws against late-term abortion.

After being caught in this lie, the President and his goon Robert Gibbs have upped the ante and still insist they are telling the truth! Three times in one week Gibbs has tried to deceive the American people by saying “There’s a law the precludes the use of federal funds for abortion.” Upon further questioning, he responded, “My answer is indifferent from what it was on Wednesday. There’s a fairly clear [as in not very clear?] federal law prohibiting the federal use of money for abortion.”

Meanwhile, Obama has claimed that he wasn’t talking about the House bill when he said, “under our plan no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” Who’s plan was he talking about then? The purpose of his whole speech was to promote the Democratic health care plan, otherwise known as H.R. 3200.

Perhaps Congressman Wilson’s behavior last week was inappropriate for the venue, but he was right. President Obama is still lying about the Democrats’ health care bill.

Here’s what Obama said, which prompted Wilson’s outburst:

“There are also those who claim our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This too is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

Then why did Senators working on the legislation have to make additional changes to the proposal two days later? If Wilson hadn’t drawn so much attention to the issue, the democrats would have been able to include loopholes for illegal immigrants.

Furthermore, here’s what Obama said this Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute:

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken. That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else. [...] If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

Hmm… Sounds like amnesty. No illegals will be covered, but their won’t be any illegals! This is being completely deceitful. If Americans don’t want illegal immigrants to be covered by tax-payer funded health insurance, why would Americans want illegals to receive amnesty and then be covered by taxpayer-funded health insurance? Such is the logic of liberals.

I’ll let you be the judge…

Update:
She’s 17!

As Honduras fights to defend its democracy, Fidel Castro and President Obama object.

Hondurans have ousted President Manuel Zelaya for attempting to rewrite their constitution. Opponents of Zelaya have pointed out that he was illegally trying to expand the limits of his power and the length of his term. The initiative was rejected by Congress, the Public Ministry, the Supreme Electoral Court and the Supreme Court, among other entities, all of whom believe that the measure is not lawful.

Yet Obama disagrees with the citizens of Honduras who are fighting to protect democracy. He has proclaimed that Zelaya is the rightful leader of Honduras and that the US will help resolve the matter.

Meanwhile, Obama has sat idly by while protesters in Iran are shot by a seemingly illegitimate government.

Obama has pledged to “stand on the side of democracy.” Why then, do his views consistently align with dictators like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez? We should keep a keen eye on how these affairs pan out, as similar events may soon transpire right here at home. We’ve already discussed Obama’s stance on fair elections…

Once again, President Obama has proven he doesn’t have a clue.

Lately, he’s been saying that our values will shield us from terrorism. But despite Obama’s code of conduct crusade, Osama bin Laden has issued another threat to the United States. He says “Obama has planted new seeds of hatred” and Americans should be prepared to suffer the consequences. So exactly how is our president going to protect us with his enchanted value system? And have “values” really inspired terrorism in the past? Who’s values? Bill Clinton’s values? Bush had only been in office a short time when 9/11 occurred.

Meanwhile, our president seems perfectly content to remain in his magical world of fantasy and imagination. The White House issued a statement saying this isn’t a real threat, al Qaeda is just trying to distract people from Obama’s speech. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum about not receiving enough attention, maybe Obama should get out of campaign mode and start thinking about a realistic strategy to keep this country safe.

Osama bin Laden, Alive and Well

The threat reveals that Osama bin Laden is alive, aware of current events, and in communication with the outside world. Remember when President Obama said that Osama isn’t a threat as long as he’s hiding in a cave somewhere? Man, and people thought George W. Bush was stupid.

Now Obama is even suggesting that the United States is one of the largest Muslim nations. Sorry, but a two percent Muslim population doesn’t qualify this country as a Muslim nation by any stretch of the imagination. Much less one of the largest Muslim nations in the world.

This man is just pathetic. He really thinks that everyone will like us better if he goes around telling the world that Americans have poor values. Maybe he could try reminding radical Muslims that we were the ones who liberated Kuwaiti Muslims, protected Kosovoian Muslims, helped Bosnian Muslims, and feed Somali Muslims, just to name a few.

Nancy Pelosi announced today that she will bring a sweeping health care reform bill to the House floor by the end of July. And if Americans want to continue to enjoy the highest quality health care in the world, they need to speak up and tell the government to stay out of it! While a great number of Americans complain about the cost of health insurance today, they will soon be complaining about the lack of access and declining quality of health care if the Democrats are able to push their legislation through.

In the absence of checks and balances, Democrats will misbehave.

Obama said “Our health care system is broken. We are not going to rest until we’ve delivered the kind of health care reform that’s going to bring down costs for families, improve quality, affordability, accessibility for all Americans.” He is clearly out of his mind if he honestly believes that a universal, government-controlled health care system is the solution. The heavy hand of the government may artificially bring costs down, but it will destroy the quality, limit accessibility, and control the treatment options of all Americans. And Obama will rob us blind to cover the cost, asking Americans to sacrifice their paychecks for a “greater good.” Considering the United States is one of the unhealthiest countries in the world, it’s going to take a lot of sacrifices to get those who’ve made chronically unhealthy lifestyles choices nursed back to health. When someone else is picking up their doctor’s bill, where’s the incentive to make the right choices?

One can look to any country with socialized medicine and find a host of serious problems, but let’s examine our majority parties’ favorites: Canada and England! In Canada, terminally ill patients are waitlisted for weeks to get into a specialist, and even longer afterward to get treatment. Contributing to this massive problem is the mass exodus of doctors from the country. To deal with this flight, Canada is replacing doctors with nurses, who obviously haven’t been through the rigors of medical school. Talk about some quality health care!

In England, the picture is even bleaker. Even former Prime Minister Tony Blair voiced his concern that the government just cannot provide adequate health care to all citizens, especially with the poor lifestyle choices of many citizens. He put it correctly when saying “individual actions impose collective costs.” This is precisely the problem of socialized medicine, and socialism in general. Even more problematic is the rationing of treatments, where patients with less favorable prognoses are kept on waiting lists until they die from their ailments.

Simple economic principles show that when prices of goods are artificially pushed down, the demand skyrockets, and shortages result. Remember what happened when Oprah gave away coupons for free chicken last week?? Now imagine every person in America had free coupons for medical care.

Moreover, medical innovation declines because companies can’t recoup their research and development costs. This is when the government steps in, further increases taxes, and creates their own research agency to develop limited “cost effective” treatments that may not benefit all patients. With never-ending lines and poor/limited options, these liberal policies beg the question: what good is free health insurance when there’s no health care? Government intervention is a slippery slope, and our country is sliding into a gigantic disaster.

Obama’s agenda is clearly to thrust the government further into every facet of our lives, so that we become more and more dependent upon it. It’s amazing that Democrats don’t feel insulted, since the party they advocate is convinced that Americans are mentally-challenged lemmings who can’t take care of themselves. After this last election, I’m beginning to believe that a majority of them are.

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.