A group of Republican senators has proposed a plan to reform welfare – not so much because they expect it to succeed, but to make an important point: that the deficit supercommittee can meet its $1.2 trillion goal without raising taxes.
“I think there’s kind of an acceptance that as long as there’s Democratic control of the Senate, we’re not going to pass anything good,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), one of the bill’s cosponsors. “Our point here is to show that there is a lot of money that we could save and deal with our deficit in a responsible way if we would look at it.”
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees-the Christmas Tree Tax-to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).
Natasha Nimer had a simple question: As a trustee in a local labor union representing City of Phoenix employees, did she have a duty to check the books of a taxpayer-funded insurance account it managed?
So she asked the executive board of AFSCME Local 2960. The response was an emphatic “no.”
She dropped the matter and thought it would end there.
She was wrong.
In the months that followed, union officials tried to strip Nimer of her duties as a trustee and steward. They tried twice to force her out of AFSCME, only to have the international headquarters order her reinstated.
Eventually union executives went after Nimer’s job as a civilian employee in the Phoenix Fire Department. They demanded her city phone records, personal and work-related emails, disciplinary files and performance evaluations; even a list of all of the Web sites she had visited. They wanted her computers seized and the hard drives searched for evidence she was doing something wrong.
Watch the accompanying video Phoenix Labor Union Targets Former Trustee here
Read Money for Nothing: Phoenix Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Union Work here
If you haven’t been following the Alinsky methods being used by Randy Parraz and his far-left associates to take down Arizona Senator Russell Pearce (R), you should pay close attention. They may target your Republican legislator very soon. If they can destroy Pearce, they can destroy anybody. The recall election will be held November 8, 2011; early balloting begins on October 13 (that is, tomorrow).
So who is Russell Pearce?
Senator Pearce gained national prominence in April 2010 as the architect of SB1070, one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in America. It allows Arizona to enforce the federal immigration laws which have been left unenforced for many years.
Pearce has spent his political career writing and sponsoring legislation that honors constitutional conservative principles.
Here are some brief highlights.
After former Gov. Janet Napolitano resigned, Sen. Pearce oversaw the biggest budget cut in Arizona’s history: $500,000,000.
He sponsored legislation to stop eminent domain abuse and protect property rights. He sponsored SB1108, the “Freedom to Carry Act,” making Arizona the number one-state for 2nd-Amendment freedom.
Story …
Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law California’s tax on Internet sales through affiliate advertising which will immediately cut small-business website revenue 20% to 30%, experts say.
The bill, AB 28X, takes effect immediately. The state Board of Equalization says the tax will raise $200 million a year, but critics claim it will raise nothing because online retailers will end their affiliate programs rather than collect the tax.
Amazon has already emailed its termination of its affiliate advertising program with 25,000 websites. The letter says, in part:
(The bill) specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.
We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
The new law won’t affect customers, Amazon said, but added that the immediate termination of the affiliate program also applies to endless.com, myhabit.com and smallparts.com.
Further reading: California tells online retailers to start collecting sales taxes from customers
Ayn Rand in 1957
The U.S. economy is crumbling. Businesses are collapsing in record numbers. Jobs have disappeared. Tax revenues are down dramatically. Coincidence?
Everything happening today under Obama resembles the storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most popular books of all time, selling over 7 million copies. Now, under President Obama, Atlas Shrugged has come to life. Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize the fleecing of innovative business owners and job creators, the looter class demonized the wealthy, just as Obama and his socialist cabal are doing in real life today.
The central plot of Atlas Shrugged is that in response to being demonized, over-taxed, over-regulated, and punished for success, America’s business owners were disappearing – dropping off the grid, and refusing to work 16-hour days to support those unwilling to put in the same blood, sweat and tears. They were going on strike. Because of that the original proposed title of “Atlas Shrugged” was “The Strike.”
They were going on strike to teach that civilization cannot survive when people are slaves to government. That without a productive class of innovative business owners willing to risk their own money and work 16-hour days, weekends and holidays, there are no jobs and no taxes to pay for government. If you punish the wealthy, the risk-takers, the innovators, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In Obama’s America, fiction is becoming fact.
General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he’s confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.
“I actually think the government will be out this year – within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months,” Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week.
He is grateful for the government’s rescue of GM – “I have nothing but good things to say about them” – but Akerson said the time for that relationship to end is coming because it’s wearing on GM.
“It’s kind of like your in-laws: It was a nice long weekend. We didn’t say a week,” Akerson said with a laugh.
And while he is eager to say goodbye to the government as a part owner of GM, Akerson would like to see it step up to the challenge of setting a higher gas tax, as part of a comprehensive energy policy.
A government-imposed tax hike, Akerson believes, will prompt more people to buy small cars and do more good for the environment than forcing automakers to comply with higher gas-mileage standards.
Activists Fight Property-Tax Increases in Bid to Curb Education Spending
Trying to plug a $3.8 million budget gap, the York Suburban School District, in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania, is seeking to raise property taxes by 1.4%.
No way, says Nick Pandelidis, founder of the York Suburban Citizens for Responsible Government, a tea-party offshoot, of the plan that would boost the tax on a median-priced home of $157,685 by $44 a year to $3,225.
“No more property-tax increases!” the 52-year-old orthopedic surgeon implored as the group met recently at a local hospital’s community room. “If you don’t starve the system, you won’t make it change.”
Fresh from victories on the national stage last year, many local tea-party activist groups took their passion for limited government and less spending back to their hometowns, and to showdowns with teacher unions over pay in some cases. Now, amid school-board elections and local budgeting, they are starting to see resultsâ?”and resistance.
In its budget proposal for the 2011-12 fiscal year, the York district has already axed noontime buses for half-day kindergarten kids, halved money for teaching supplies and raised the fees for driver education to $300 per student from $50.
District parent Sarah Reinecker told the school board she would be willing to pay more taxes. “Starving education is the last thing that makes long-term economic sense,” she said.
Legions of tea partiers continue to focus on the federal budget and debt ceiling. But many are following the strategy of other rising political movements, such as the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, and seeking representation on school boards. They are flooding this spring’s board elections, and creating an unusually long lineup of candidates in places like York County. Dr. Pandelidis’s group is fielding five candidates in May’s election and hopes to win a majority on the nine-member board.
WASHINGTON — Two Illinois Republicans said Sunday they aren’t buying the Obama administration’s argument that the federal debt limit ought to be raised without a fuss.
“I will vote ‘no’ on raising the debt ceiling unless we have comprehensive, dramatic, effective, and broad-based cuts to federal spending including the reform of entitlement spending,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Kirk said raising the debt limit without substantial cuts “would risk repeating the mistakes of the governments of Greece, Portugal and Ireland — all who said ‘yes’ to everyone and ‘no’ to their economic future.”
