Amy Ridenour is the president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. She and her husband David, the vice president of the National Center, are the parents of three third graders. David's comments, like those of other National Center staff members, directors, associates and fellows, often appear in this blog.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Hear the Borellis Speak on Cap-and-Trade at Harrisburg Tea Party Event This Saturday
Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli and Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli are both featured speakers at a rally to be held in conjunction with the "March on Harrisburg, PA" on Saturday, November 14. The march and rally is sponsored by the Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots.
The rally will be held on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol and is scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM eastern. Prior to the rally, people will gather in the parking lot of nearby City Island for a march across the Susquehanna River that is scheduled to begin at 2:00 PM eastern.
Tom and Deneen will both speak on the economic consequences of the "cap-and-trade" energy tax proposal supported by the Obama Administration and the liberal leadership of the House and Senate in Washington. The keynote speaker will be former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
President Barack Obama is often likened - and clearly sees himself as spiritual successor - to presidential luminaries like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But he is fast on track to following the footsteps of a less celebrated predecessor - George H.W. Bush.
Candidate Bush accepted his party's nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention with the immortal, Peggy Noonan-penned promise "Read my lips: no new taxes." When President Bush later agreed to raise taxes as part of the 1990 budget negotiations, he wrecked his re-election chances and became a one-termer.
In September, 2008, candidate Obama promised, "I can make this firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making $250,000 will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
Oops. The health care bill the House passed on Saturday, for which Obama personally lobbied members of Congress, contains - new taxes. Lots of them. New taxes that will effect earners of all income levels, but which will especially hurt small-business owners.
Of course this bill, like all of the health care proposals recently debated by Congress, was instigated by, and created at the behest of, Barack Obama, who promised in his February joint address to Congress, "quality, affordable health care for every American." That he could promise such a bauble while simultaneously vowing not to raise our taxes "one dime" betrays either a stunning economic ignorance - or deep mendacity.
Obama has clearly studied the greats, Lincoln and F.D.R. But he should also have made an examination of the less successful presidents, like George H. W. Bush, lest he repeat their mistakes and suffer their fate in political purgatory.
Written by Matt Patterson, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
"Newspapers are the heart of America's greatest publishing tradition - independent voices eager to expose official wrongdoing, to shine light in dark places, to speak for ordinary people. It is no exaggeration to say that newspapers were so crucial to public debate that the American Revolution might never have happened without them. From the Republic's earliest days, newspapers have been the watchdogs of the high and mighty, holding them to account, criticizing their actions, and even denigrating them, though usually with good reason. Policy decisions on wars, taxes, tariffs and debts have been routinely judged as well, and often even more harshly. John Jay, for example, who was one of the 'Publius' trio of authors of the Federalist Papers, once complained that he could travel at night by the light of his own burning effigies after signing the Jay Treaty of 1794 with Britain.
If newspapers become tax-exempt foundations, such independence will sooner or later be lost forever. The tax code bars such organizations from taking positions on legislation or endorsing candidates. Just as think tanks now are routinely threatened with loss of their tax status for getting too close to politics, so editors of every political stripe will find themselves at constant risk, forced to weigh the words of their editorials and news stories based on tax consequences rather than accuracy and merit. Even more ominously, the bill extends the offer of tax-free status to newspapers only so long as they remain 'necessary or valuable in achieving an educational purpose.' No genius is required to figure out who will define what is an appropriate educational purpose."
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Daily Kos Wants Tea Party Participants to Forgo All Government Services, But Still Pay All Taxes
At times, activists of the superficial left write such stupid things, it is embarrassing to read them.
Such is the case with a Laura Clawson Daily Kos post Friday in which lefties are encouraged to send a faux "Socialist Free Purity Pledge" around the Internet. The gist of Clawson's message is that anyone who attended a Tea Party rally is a hypocrite if they from this point forward ever use a single thing funded by the federal government.
The post had at the time I read it 265 comments, most of which were favorable to the idea, which many of them actually thought was clever.
I ask myself, can the activist left be so uniformed as to believe that when it comes to government spending, there are only two positions possible, that of wanting the feds to spend more and grow larger, and that of wanting the feds to spend not one penny? That anyone who does not support President Obama's government-expansion plans is, ipso facto, the strictest of libertarians?
Seeing how badly the left governs when in office, I conclude "yes." Yes, they really can be this ignorant.
Which explains why the leftists in Congress and the White House think socialized medicine works and that the best way to deal with the Kremlin is from a position of slobbering, supplicating subservience.
The leftists think anyone who attended a Tea Party rally should sign a document pledging they will never use a government service again...
...but what the lefties don't put in their "Socialist Free Purity Pledge" is a pledge of their own to pass legislation offering to refund the tax dollars coercively paid by every person who might choose to sign their Purity Pledge and who sticks to it.
So selfish, these lefties. In their bitter little world, even the people who don't use any government will be forced to pay for it.
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E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
President Obama is saying he won't sign a health care bill that adds "one dime to the deficit":
"There are some principles that, if they are not embodied in the bill, I will not sign it," Obama said in an interview with ABC News' Robin Roberts aired on "Good Morning America" today.
Yet the president declined in the interview to draw a line in the sand on a so-called "public option," offering government-run health insurance to those who cannot find coverage privately.
Asked if the must-sign elements include that option, the president said: "I will give you an example -- if it's adding one dime to the deficit, if it's not fully paid for," then he will not sign the legislation...
Nice words, but if he means them, why has he been working for months for the trillion+ dollar House health care bill?
Surely even a man who spends tax dollars as easily as does our president considers a trillion dollars to be real money.
Or perhaps he's signaling an intention to cut even more from Medicare?
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Outrage of the Day: ObamaCare Would Tax Some Workers So Others Could Retire Early
James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation highlights once again a genuine travesty included in the President's health care reform proposal, a $10 billion bailout of labor unions.
Sherk writes, in part:
...The most obvious benefit President Obama's health care plan provides to organized labor is a $10 billion taxpayer bailout for underfunded retiree health benefit plans. Many unions negotiate benefit packages that allow workers to retire early and collect health benefits until they qualify for Medicare. Many of these plans they are underfunded because unions mismanaged them.
The healthcare legislation transfers $10 billion to these accounts, in the form of a reinsurance program that pays most of the cost of claims for workers in these plans. Like the GM and Chrysler bailouts, the health care legislation requires all taxpayers -- including low income workers without retirement plans--to pay for benefits for already well-compensated union workers...
To recap:
1) The bailout is intended not for poor or disabled people, but people with jobs who would like to retire before reaching age 65;
2) The bailout would be paid for by taxpayers, most of whom will not enjoy the leisure and other benefits of retiring before 65. Many will not be able to retire even at 65;
3) The unions had funds available to pay for these benefits, but they mismanaged them.
Pathetic.
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The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, has developed a health care proposal that would cost taxpayers at least $900 billion while making health insurance less affordable.
The plan includes new taxes on health insurance companies. These would, of course, be paid by customers.
Our federal government taxes gasoline heavily as a conservation measure, that is, to reduce the amount of it we choose to buy.
Taxing health insurance makes sense only if you want to deter the purchase of it. It makes no sense whatsoever as a cure to the problem of too many uninsured Americans.
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Tom Blumer: "How crazy is it that Ford has to 'negotiate' a new contract with the United Auto Workers union, even though the union has ownership interests in two of its principal competitors...?
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John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, has eight suggestions for improving health care in today's Wall Street Journal.
They are, quoting Mackey:
Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems...
Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits...
Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines...
Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.
Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.
Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost...
Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.
Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
Mackey's op-ed is excellent. I strongly encourage folks to read the whole thing.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Vice President David Ridenour. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow on Twitter.
As to the statistics themselves, Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation, which provided the tax analysis above, notes:
Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.
To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.
Insulating 95 percent of voters from the consequences of their electoral decisions is dangerous and misleading. Does anyone really believe that we can expand nondefense spending to a record share of gross domestic product, reform the health-care system that amounts to one-sixth of the economy, reinvent the energy portfolio that powers our lives, and drive next-generation broadband to every home while cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans?
I don't believe it. I believe we need to cut spending, and I also believe the top one percent -- which does not, alas, include me in their number -- are paying more than their fair share.
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Outrage of the Day: Police Chief Calls Traffic Camera Monitoring "Cowardly"
District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier called iPhone users who monitor the location of traffic cameras and speed traps "cowardly."
Chief Lanier appears to have totally forgotten the official purpose of the traffic cameras and speed traps, which is to get drivers to follow traffic regulations.
People who stick to the speed limit because their iPhone app told them a speed trap is coming up are not any less safe than people who stick to the speed limit because they see a police car on the shoulder.
In fact, they may be safer, as the pre-warned iPhone users probably don't suddenly hit the brakes as do so many drivers when they see a police car (even if they aren't speeding in the first place -- ever notice that?).
I'm an iPhone user who drives in D.C. I had no interest in getting this app until Chief Lanier made this comment. Now I intend to find out what it is called and get it just because she said this. Few things are more annoying than a public servant abusing citizens for exercising their constitutional rights (unless it is a public servant with the power to make arrests doing it).
I will toss the chief a bone, however: When I start routinely seeing police cars -- the ones that don't have their sirens on or show any sign that they are responding to an emergency -- routinely following the speed limits and other traffic rules, I'll delete the app.
Care to tell your own officers to slow down, Chief?
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The Government's Penalties for Success Are Running Into Its Subsidies for Failure
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says today in an article by Matt Cover for CNSNews.com that small businesses don't make $280,000 a year, so new health care tax hikes at that level won't harm small business.
Oddly though -- as a commenter on the CNSNews.com website noted -- the Small Business Administration will provide financial assistance to firms making many times that.
If you manufacture cigarettes, for example, you are eligible for Small Business Administration assistance if you have a thousand employees. Setting aside the question of why Congress is subsidizing cigarette manufacturing while penalizing it with sin taxes, can we rationally assume a business with a thousand employees never clears $280,000 a year?
So we appear to have a case in which you are penalized for being rich at the same time you are subsidized for not being rich enough.
But there is a method to Congress' madness, says Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), as reported by Adam Brickley and Fadia Galindo for CNSNews.com. The Congressional majority's health care tax plan is designed to harm small businesses sufficiently to force them to cut their employees' health care benefits, thus forcing those employees onto the public health care plan.
So when it looks like Congress is taxing and subsidizing the same people in a completely nonsensical way, we can rest assured that there is a purpose behind it after all -- the purpose of driving as many of us as politically-possible into a substandard, inevitably insolvent public health care plan.
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Rolling Stone: Cap and Trade is a Carbon Tax Structured So Private Interests Collect the Revenues
Tom Borelli of our Free Enterprise Project has repeatedly warned Americans that passage of cap-and-trade will lead to the creation of a new economic bubble (see here, here or here).
Now Rolling Stone magazine is getting into the act, and it's not pulling any punches.
A sample paragraph to whet your appetite:
...cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman [Sachs], is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected. [Emphasis in the original]
"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil futures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."
We've said all along that if you actually believe human beings are causing dangerous global warming, and you honestly believe that this global warming must be fought by suppressing energy use, the only approach that has any hope of not being corrupt is increasing energy taxes. We do oppose increasing energy taxes, but would prefer that by far to cap-and-trade.
I did not expect to see this sentiment in Rolling Stone, but we welcome it to the club.
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Although I don't endorse every sentiment in every sentence of this Associated Press article "PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama's Unkept Tax Pledge" by Stephen Ohlemacher, it's well worth reading.
The piece begins:
President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It's a promise he's already broken and will likely have to break again.
Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes - which disproportionately hit the poor - to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.
Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.
The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion...
Continuing my post about the Tea Parties in New York City and Washington, D.C. attended by National Center staff, here are photos of the July 4 Tea Party in Washington.
I estimate approximately 4,000 people attended the Tea Party in Washington D.C.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
A second round of "tea parties" took place across America this week. According to one organizer's web site, there were almost 1,500 scheduled events across America to protest the unabated growth of government, particularly since Obama took office.
On July 1, Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli and her husband - National Center Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli - attended the tea party in Times Square in New York City.
On July 4, National Center executive director David W. Almasi and his wife Nancy attended the tea party in Washington just steps from the Capitol.
Below are some photos from the New York City tea party. The next post will contain photos from the Washington D.C. tea party.
Deneen Borelli
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
It's not often one can say a wonky op-ed on health care reform is funny as well as wise, but this one by Holman Jenkins in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal certainly is.
(I stole the title of this piece from it, by the way.)
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Project 21's Ak'Bar Shabazz has an op-ed opposing a new federal tax on driving in Sunday's Washington Examiner.
It begins:
During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama endeared himself to many voters with a promise that 95 percent of Americans would get a tax cut and those making under $250,000 "would not see a single dime of tax increase - not on anything."
Since Obama won and he's already spent so much, it was only a matter of time before his pledge went by the wayside. First came new taxes on tobacco to pay for middle-class kids' health care.
Now Rep. James Oberstar, D-MN, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wants a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) imposed on every vehicle. And he wants it right away.
When a colleague suggested state-level pilot programs to test the feasibility of the tax, Oberstar replied: "It's going to be done, it's something we have to do. Why not just move it along?" Oberstar hopes for a vote as early as June.
Obama's transportation secretary, former Illinois Republican Rep. Ray LaHood, promoted a VMT back in February. Although the White House backed off LaHood's trial balloon then, Congress may now try to ram it down Americans' throats...
Outrage of the Day: Hurting the Nations by Hurting the Rich
A very good column by composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and more) on the pitfalls of raising taxes on the rich is directed at a British audience, but ought to be read by Americans.
Here's hoping lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic pay attention.
Andrew Lloyd Webber writes:
The opinion polls have uttered. The country loves the new 50 per cent top rate of income tax. Soak the rich. Smash the bankers...
...I believe that this new top rate of tax could be the final nail in the coffin of Britain plc.
I am 61 years old. I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth...
...I write this article because I fear the inevitable exodus of the talent that can dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in. It is inevitable, given that other countries are bidding for entrepreneurs. The Government must modify its proposals.
I give you this example. I have altered the details of the family I write about for obvious reasons. But the essentials are true.
Last Thursday I met with a thirtysomething guy. I absolutely depend on him in a highly technical area of theatrical production. For legal reasons he has to employ himself through his own company. Under the new tax regime, he will have to pay 13.3 per cent to employ himself before he pays himself anything. And then he will have to pay 51.5 per cent on what's left.
This is a guy at the cutting edge of his profession who works all over the world. He is in demand in every major territory where entertainment is produced. He has a young wife and two children. Last Thursday he told me that he and his wife had decided that the UK was no longer where they wanted to live.
His wife thinks the State education system is inadequate. And she fears that a bankrupt Britain will increasingly be a worse place in which to live as the horror of our present financial mess hits us all in the solar plexus.
He says that he is young enough to set up shop somewhere else. The new tax rates were the final straw. These talented young people know they will make it impossible for them to educate their kids privately in the UK.
So Britain plc loses not just the 40 per cent he would have paid in personal taxes under the old regime - plus NI and everything else - but... Come on, I don't need to explain the knock-on effect. It's obviously huge and immensely damaging - that's why I am writing this article quickly and probably with too much passion...
...Of course there are thousands of people like my friend - some employing themselves through their own companies, some self-employed, some employed by others. But all are part of the wealth-creation engine that has helped power Britain's economy...
...So I ask the Government to reconsider what it is doing. More than ever before we need to keep high-flying professionals in the UK. We can't, as we have done in the past, dump on them through penal personal taxation...
...The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.
Easton, Pennsylvania Tea Party Photo by Mychal Massie
Writing in his regular, independent column for WorldNetDaily, Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie has strong words for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and no doubt others (such as David Axelrod) who belittle the Americans of all political persuasions who gathered across the country last week in "tea party" protests.
Said Mychal:
Any doubt about the condescending arrogance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her ilk was laid to rest when she attacked the tea parties as being initiatives "funded by the high-end, we call it Astroturf -- it's not really a grass-roots movement -- its Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich, instead for the great middle class."
The Obama White House said those attending the tea parties were either disaffected, bitter Republicans, or voters acting out of frustration. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano characterized military veterans and the types of Americans attending tea party events as right-wing extremists and warned that said extremists (i.e., anyone that dares disagree with Obama policies) would use the bad economy and the election of a black man as president to recruit members. Government officials fomenting the agitprop that the rich white boogeyman is out to get you shows how far those in government are willing to go to increase their control over our rights, liberties and pursuits of happiness.
Americans are angry. Americans are disaffected, and voters are darn sure frustrated...
...I not only attended a tea party, I watched them develop and take root. I can assure the White House and Pelosi that those in attendance were of all political persuasions. I can assure Napolitano that we are angry, and we are recruiting members...
...The line in the sand has been drawn -- the pressing issue for those of us, from every political persuasion, who are fighting back is: What do we do next? We turned out by the hundreds of thousands across the nation -- but what now? What now is that we stay disgusted, determined and focused. Our enemy is worried because they know that if we do, they are in trouble.
They have insulted us as extremists, while Pelosi and the mainstream media referred to the illegal aliens that attempted to disrupt our economy by staging nationwide job walkouts as patriots.
We cannot afford to forget or relent. We have their attention and we must keep it...
...This isn't about Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent -- it is about those of us who collectively have had enough of the wasteful spending and taxation. It is about those of us who are outraged over the debt that is being passed on to our children and grandchildren. It is about those of us who refuse to have foreign courts tell Americans in Kansas, Iowa or Kentucky what they can do with their land. We may not agree on every political issue -- but the tea parties are showing that we are united on those crucial issues...
Executive Director David Almasi and other National Center for Public Policy Research staff members were among the estimated 2,000 attendees at the Tea Party outside the White House today.
David took quite a few pictures, a few of which follow (see the note at the end of this post for reprint information; go here to see more pictures, a collection taken by staff member Devon Carlin):
And National Center for Public Policy Research staff members Jeff Temple and Devon Carlin...
Note: Bloggers, webmasters, journalists and others who would like to use any of these pictures are welcome to do so under the following conditions: We ask that you not sell them or deface them, and that they be credited as follows: "David Almasi/National Center for Public Policy Research," with a link back to this location.
Pictures taken by staff member Devon Carlin also are available on the same terms.
Research Associate Devon Carlin braved the rain today to attend the Washington, D.C. Tea Party outside the White House today (along with other other staff members from the National Center for Public Policy Research and Project 21's Kevin Martin, who spoke at the event).
An assortment of pictures Devon took at the White House Tea Party follows (see the note at the end of this post for reprint information; go here to see pictures taken by Executive Director David Almasi):
And, of course, a shot of some of the many tea bags...
Note: Bloggers, webmasters, journalists and others who would like to use any of these pictures are welcome to do so under the following conditions: We ask that you not sell them or deface them, and that they be credited as follows: "Devon Carlin/National Center for Public Policy Research," with a link back to this location.
More pictures, an assortment taken by David Almasi, are available here on the same terms.
Not that we're surprised, but President Barack Obama has broken his pledge (see YouTube video above or go here or here) not to raise any kind of taxes on families earning less than $250,000 per year.
It took him until February 4, 2009 to break his promise; the tax hike he signed into law that day goes into effect tomorrow.
As Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation Tax Policy Blog noted today, tomorrow, the federal cigarette tax goes from 39 cents to $1.0066 per pack of 20 cigarettes. As Henchman pointed out last month, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that 95.8 percent of all expenditures on tobacco are made by people with household incomes under $150,000 annually.
Writing in 2007 for the National Center for Public Policy Research, David Hogberg, PhD pointed out that the plan -- then merely a soon-to-be-vetoed bill; now, thanks to Congress and Barack Obama, federal law -- to raise tobacco taxes to fund an expansion of the S-Chip program would "result in families whose income puts them in the bottom 15 percent of households funding benefits for children who are in families close to the top 25 percent of households."
Here's more of what David Hogberg pointed out at the time:
The legislation passed by Congress takes this unfair system and makes it regressive. First, much of the new funding for SCHIP comes from a large increase in the cigarette tax. As Table 1 shows, people with incomes under 200 percent of the poverty level smoke at rates higher than those with incomes above 200 percent of the poverty level.
Thus, the taxes to fund the expansion of SCHIP will fall disproportionately on those making under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
It could be argued that this is a fair system if all children in families under 200 percent of the poverty level were eligible for SCHIP and if only those under 200 percent of poverty were eligible for SCHIP. But none of this new revenue goes to those under 200 percent of the poverty level; benefits for those children are already funded via other taxes. The added revenues from the cigarette tax are for the purpose of funding the expansion. Indeed, both SCHIP bills passed by Congress take the tax revenues from those under 200 percent of the poverty level and give it to those children who live in families above 200 percent of poverty, likely all the way up to 400 percent of the poverty level. Table 2 shows the income amount by family size for each poverty level.
It is not inconceivable that a parent with one child with an income of $13,690 will be funding benefits for two children in a family of four with an income of $82,600. In short, SCHIP expansion would result in families whose income puts them in the bottom 15 percent of households funding benefits for children who are in families close to the top 25 percent of households.
It is quite common for the political left to attack a flat tax as regressive. SCHIP expansion is expected to impose not only a flat tax on cigarettes, but it then to take the revenue from that tax and distribute it up the income ladder. It seems clear the political left has an agenda other than basic fairness when it supports SCHIP expansion.
So, two weeks after taking office, Barack Obama broke his promise to not raise any form of taxes on people making under $250,000 per year, and the bill starts coming due tomorrow.
For only keeping his promise for a measly two weeks, Barack Obama gets today's Outrage of the Day.
Hat tip: Carter Wood at ShopFloor.org for alerting me that the tax goes up tomorrow and and for a link to Joseph Henchman's writing, and to Americans for Tax Reform for the video.
* Increase spending by $1 trillion over the next decade;
* Include an additional $250 billion placeholder for another financial bailout;
* Likely lead to a 12 percent increase in discretionary spending;
* Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of GDP over pre-recession levels;
* Raise taxes on all Americans by $1.4 trillion over the next decade;
* Raise taxes for 3.2 million taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade;
* Call for a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) law despite offering a budget that would violate it by $3.4 trillion;
* Assume a rosy economic scenario that few economists anticipate;
* Leave permanent deficits averaging $600 billion even after the economy recovers; and
* Double the publicly-held national debt to over $15 trillion ($12.5 trillion after inflation).
Federal spending was $24,000 per household before the recession. President Obama would raise it to $32,000 per household by 2019 (after inflation).
President Obama harshly criticized President Bush's budgets. Yet his budget actually *accelerates* Bush's policies – more runaway spending, more bailouts, and even bigger deficits.
The President is not repudiating Bushism – he's doubling down on it.
Outrage of the Day: Obama Administration Says Some Americans Are Deadbeats
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, we see this line in the President's budget:
"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."
Reminds me of a certain U.N. Secretary General, who considers the country he gets the most money from to be a "deadbeat" nation.
The more money an American makes, the higher his taxes are; not just in the amount of dollars, but in the percentage of his income taxed. If you pay more taxes than your neighbor, and a higher percentage of your income goes to taxes, how is it that, on the matter of taxation, your neighbor is living up to his "responsibilit[y] as a neighbor and a citizen," and you are not?
Hat tip: Tim Graham on Newsbusters. ___________________
Open Letter to the U.S. Senate on the So-Called Stimulus
Along with other individuals from a variety of organizations, I signed the following letter, distributed today to members on the Senate, urging them not to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a so-called stimulus plan. The plan has been rushed; it is wasteful, and it won't work.
In my view, a true plan to stimulate the economy would cut taxes, trim regulations where possible and help make energy more accessible and thus, more affordable.
The text of the letter and the list of signers follows:
February 4th, 2009
To the Members of the U.S. Senate:
We the undersigned public interest organizations, representing millions of members and supporters nationwide, hereby call upon you to reject the $819 billion spending bill that passed the House of Representatives last week.
This legislation will total some $1.2 trillion when interest is calculated over the next decade, and represents an unsustainable growth of government.
In addition, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that the budget deficit will already be $1.2 trillion for 2009. On January 3rd, the Washington Post reported that the deficit could total as much as $2 trillion. In part, it depends on how badly the recession hits the U.S., but also on how much productive capital the government takes out of the broader economy.
The irresponsible expansion of the budget to bail out state governments from their own budget deficits, expand Medicaid, boost education spending, food stamps and unemployment benefits, build federal buildings, provide more for public housing, construct climate change supercomputers, erect trade barriers overseas, create refundable tax credits, and make special interest payouts will not stimulate sustainable economic growth.
Instead, the astronomical growth of government spending, coupled with further monetary easing and protectionism, will discourage investment, savings, and capital creation, because in the longer term it means higher taxes, higher interest rates, and inflation. It will destroy jobs in the private sector, thus increasing individual dependency on government.
Importantly, it will steep American taxpayers ever deeper into a spiral of debt, now nearly $10.7 trillion. That includes $4.3 trillion owed in the form of unfunded obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and other commitments, and $6.4 trillion held privately, $3 trillion of which is held overseas. 40 percent of the debt held privately comes due this year. The only way for the government to pay it is to borrow yet more money.
As a result, the federal government is running the serious risk that it will default on its financial obligations, as the nation's creditors during the current economic downturn may be unable to continue sustaining the uncontrolled growth of spending, leaving the nation in financial ruin.
America needs a plan now to begin paying down the national debt, not an ill-conceived scheme that will make that task impossible for our children and our children's children. The nation needs to tighten its belt, and learn how to live on less credit, less borrowing, and less debt.
This is a change that must occur at the individual level, at the county level, the state level, and the national level. It is not a change that should begin by doubling down on a hasty, careless gamble.
In addition, permanent tax cuts that change incentives are much more effective than temporary targeted tax incentives and spending. What economists call the "permanent income hypothesis" shows that individuals and businesses only change their spending and investment habits significantly when they expect policy changes to be permanent. It takes more than one-year, for instance, to build a factory, and businesses may not do so if they think that tax incentives are only temporary.
Preventing tax increases on individual income, capital gains and dividends, changing the tax code to allow full-cost, first-year expensing for business equipment rather than the arbitrary IRS depreciation schedule, and lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate, among the highest in the world, would yield much more bang for the buck in ensuring a rapid economic recovery than the current package of massive spending with a sliver of targeted tax cuts.
Again, on behalf of our members nationwide, we the undersigned urge you to reject the $819 billion spending bill now being considered. Instead, we ask you to promulgate a real plan for change, to finally set the nation's fiscal house in order, to provide permanent tax relief to businesses and individuals, to free the American people from the boom-to-bust economic cycle, and to at last retire the national debt.
Sincerely,
Fred L. Smith, Jr. President Competitive Enterprise Institute
Gary Aldrich Chairman CNP Action, Inc.
William Wilson President Americans for Limited Government
Mark Williamson Founder and President Federal Intercessors
Thomas McClusky VP for Government Affairs Family Research Council
David N. Bossie President Citizens United
James L. Martin President 60 Plus Association
Duane Parde President National Taxpayers Union
Mark Chmura Executive Director Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
Thomas Schatz President Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Dr. William Greene President RightMarch.com
Ken Blackwell Chairman Coalition for a Conservative Majority
John Berlau Director Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs
Ron Shuping Executive Vice President of Programming The Inspiration Networks
Alex-St. James Chairman African American Republican Leadership Council
Cliff Kincaid President America's Survival, Inc.
Richard Falknor Chairman Maryland Center-Right Coalition
Amy Ridenour President National Center for Public Policy Research
Obama, Durbin and Kerry Call for Investigations of Alleged Tax Cheating
Remember the ultra-mini Blackwater tax scandal of 2007? In it, liberal Senators Barack Obama, John Kerry and Dick Durbin kicked up a fuss because Blackwater treated security guards it employed in Iraq as independent contractors (making them responsible for paying their own taxes) rather than as employees whose income and payroll taxes were deducted from their paychecks.
Obama and Durbin sent a letter to Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson complaining that misclassification of employees as independent contractors contributes to the "tax gap" (that is, the difference between the amount of taxes legally owned to the federal government versus the amount collected), and seeking a full investigation into Blackwater.
Fast forward 15 months.
After sticking behind a Treasury Secretary nominee with "tax gap" problems of his own, Barack Obama is pushing for an HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle, who somehow managed to leave $83,333 in consulting income off his 2007 tax return, deducted $14,963 in non-existent charitable contributions from his 2007 tax return, and accepted $73,031 worth of car and driver services in 2005, $89,129 worth in 2006 and $93,096 worth in 2007 without it occurring to him over three solid years that these benefits are taxable income.
And then there's the unresolved question of possible tax liability for luxury travel paid for by others.
Of the Daschle nomination, John Kerry is saying "there is a completely understandable, absolutely acceptable and rational explanation for what happened here."
(Blackwater had a stronger case than does Daschle, but never mind.)
For his part, Dick Durbin is assuring the country, "If all you knew about Tom Daschle was that he used to be a Senator, and he made a mistake and had to pay over $100,000 in back taxes, you have a right to be skeptical, even cynical. But if you know Tom Daschle, you know better."
At Energy and Commerce Hearing, House Conservatives Call CEOs to Account
Looks like conservatives on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling turncoat corporate CEOs to account on the Hill today:
From Stephen Power's account on the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog, as posted there by Keith Johnson:
The Waxman era begins: The first congressional hearing of 2009 on climate change got off to an acrimonious start Thursday, as House Republicans blasted a group of corporate CEOs and environmental groups for staging a press conference instead of appearing before the House Ènergy and Commerce Committee to answer lawmakers’ questions about their ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Republicans also vowed to hold members of the US Climate Action Partnership accountable for their own use of fossil fuels, by demanding they explain to the committee whether they traveled to Washington by corporate aircraft and how much fuel they used.
“Be prepared for a battle,” Illinois Republican John Shimkus said at the start of the hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mr. Shimkus vowed to “hold accountable” any Democrats from coal-abundant and petroleum-producing states who vote in favor of legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set up an emissions trading system in which companies would have to buy permits allowing them to pollute.
Mr. Shimkus and other Republicans called such legislation, which is favored by President-elect Barack Obama, “a shell game designed to hide” the true costs of regulation from consumers...
Good, good, good.
Using Congress for profiteering is reprehensible; doing it in the name of conservation while flying in on corporate jets to lobby for disproportionately-higher energy costs on lower-income and minority populations makes it doubly so.
I'm not at the hearing, but who wants to bet they have it heated nice and toasty on this bitterly cold global warmy January day?
The only creature comfort the conspirators will be missing is a collection of puppies for the CEOs and the liberal Congressmen to kick on their way out of the hearing room (or so I assume).
We issued a press release on this expensive nonsense earlier this morning:
Energy Bubble, Anyone?
Henry Waxman Gives Public a Look at the Corporate-Congressional Alliance that Threatens to Raise Energy Prices in Pursuit of Private Profit
Thursday's first hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee since Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) ousted Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chairman is drawing criticism from the National Center for Public Policy Research, which says the hearing illustrates how powerful corporate interests are working with influential special interests and with the liberal majority in Congress to use government to enhance private profits at great cost to economic growth and liberty.
The hearing will, according to the committee's announcement, "present the perspectives of members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership ('USCAP'), a coalition of over 30 businesses and nongovernmental organizations that has called for Congress to pass legislation to address the climate change threat."
"Today's hearing on the U.S. Climate Action Partnership exposes the dangers posed by the new political economy," said Tom Borelli PhD, director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research. "The alignment of corporations, special interest groups and liberal members of Congress aiming for this legislative goal is frightening. The housing bubble was born from an alliance of similar interest groups and now we are about to repeat the same mistake with energy policy."
Corporate members of USCAP are trying to profit from a government-mandated "cap and trade" anti-global warming policy by selling so called carbon credits from reductions in greenhouse gases. Under cap-and-trade, emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, would be limited by the federal government. Companies that are over their emission allotment will be forced to purchase credits from another company that is below its allowance.
Under a cap-and-trade policy, companies would be forced to raise energy prices to reduce their emissions. This would unleash a series of adverse economic consequences and hardships for Americans, as the National Center's Vice President David Ridenour noted in a recent article in Investor's Business Daily:
* A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps, similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63% cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.
* According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices by 29%, electricity prices by 55% and natural gas prices by 15% by 2015.
* A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office, examining the costs of cutting carbon emissions just 15%, noted that customers "would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would."
"The alignment of corporate and government agendas for the so called "social good" is eerily similar of the warnings in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which described the unraveling of capitalism" said Deneen Borelli, a full-time Fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research-sponsored African-American leadership network Project 21.
"Pursuing legislation that will raise energy prices in the middle of a recession is economic suicide. It exposes the inability of these CEOs to connect the dots between economic growth and their future earnings," added Tom Borelli. "Let's not forget USCAP corporate membership reads like a who's who list of corporate losers; AIG and Lehman Brothers were founding members and General Electric stock is trading at multiyear lows. Ford, Chrysler and GM are also members -- need I say more?" said Tom Borelli.
"Unfortunately for shareholders, the USCAP CEOs, like their banking industry colleagues, have executed poor risk management regarding the impact of cap-and-trade on their businesses. While banking CEOs thought real estate prices could only go up, USCAP CEOs somehow think there is no downside risk to high energy prices and handing over more power to government bureaucrats. They also think the environmental special interest groups are their friends. That's incredibly naïve," Tom Borelli said.
"We know for a fact that some USCAP CEOs have not analyzed the impact of cap-and-trade on their business. In response to my question about the company's participation in USCAP at the Caterpillar shareholder meeting in 2007, CEO James Owens admitted he did not conduct a cost benefit analysis of cap-and-trade on his business. Shareholders should be outraged over such incompetence," said Deneen Borelli.
"ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva has also not done his homework," said Tom Borelli. "ConocoPhillips has made a significant investment in Canadian oil sands, which release about three times the amount of carbon dioxide than traditional oil. Since cap-and-trade will increase the cost of carbon emissions, Mulva is lobbying to increase the cost of his investment. In addition, his USCAP partner Natural Resources Defense Council is taking legal action to block the processing of the oil sands at a ConocoPhillips refinery."
"Finally, if General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt is so concerned about the state of the planet," Tom Borelli Continued, "why was he selling electricity infrastructure equipment to Iran? Nuclear Iran poses a much greater threat than carbon emissions."
America doesn't need cap and trade and it doesn't need a carbon tax. Any look at the sorry state at the USCAP portion of America's business community, however, makes clear that of the two, cap and trade is worse, because it pits the profit interests of big business directly against the pocketbook interests of the little guy. ____
The Welfare State Expands Access to Health Insurance - Not
We received a notice today from The National Center for Public Policy Research's health insurance carrier, an HMO, to remind us that our January invoice will be two percent higher thanks to a new District of Columbia tax on employers paying the premiums for their employees' HMO memberships, as well as anyone paying out-of-pocket for an HMO membership.
Steve Milloy Picks Apart Paulson Plan on WBAL at 1:30 on Thursday - Listen Live!
By David Almasi:
Steve Milloy, a director of the National Center's newly-announced Free Enterprise Project, will be a guest of Clarence Mitchell IV on WBAL radio in Baltimore this afternoon at 1:30 pm eastern. Steve will discuss his comments yesterday warning Congress that it would be unwise to grant excessive new powers to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and other cabinet officials (and their successors) under any financial "bailout" legislation.
You can listen to Steve from anywhere in America by going to the WBAL web site and clicking the "Listen Live" tab that can be found at the top left of the page.
In a release on the topic of Paulson and the bailout yesterday, Milloy noted:
Paulson should not be given more opportunities to punish his enemies and promote his friends. Engineering the sale of Bear Sterns at a fire sale price and allowing Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt while making efforts to save Goldman Sachs should raise serious questions about Paulson's personal agenda. Having served in the Nixon Administration it seems Paulson took careful notes in the creation and execution of an enemies list. Let's not forget that under Paulson's leadership Goldman Sachs made millions by creating the mortgage crisis.
The full press release can be read by clicking here.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Billionaire Warren Buffett famously says taxes should be increased.
Well, no wonder! He's trying to get on -- if he isn't already on -- the moral equivalent of welfare himself by buying into Goldman Sachs at a time when that firm's former CEO is lobbying Congress furiously for a tax-funded bailout package that will benefit Goldman Sachs.
More on Buffett benefiting from a bailout in a Lawrence B. Lindsey article here ____
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge's Mysterious Files
As an executive of a non-profit foundation I read with interest the article by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center about the mysteriously flexible ownership of 132 boxes of files of a now-defunct non-profit called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
Mr. Kurtz wishes to review these files, which are in the possession of the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (a publicly-supported institution), because he is researching the relationship between a former member of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers, and the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois. Both men were officials of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a non-profit organization, before the group closed in 2001.
A bit of a mystery has developed because the Daley Library, having not long ago gone out of its way to make the Chicago Annenberg Challenge files available to Mr. Kurtz for his research, suddenly withheld its permission. The ins-and-outs of the story are best learned by reading Mr. Kurtz's article, but the short version is that a concern by the Daley Library that it does not have the legal right to display the material has suddenly emerged. The library told Mr. Kurtz it was working with the donor to resolve this problem, but it declined to tell Mr. Kurtz the identity of the donor.
Mr. Kurtz then speculates that, among other possibilities, Mr. Ayres himself, a former CAC executive, may be the donor.
That's the part I noted with interest, because I don't think he is likely to be. Bill Ayres could only legally donate the CAC documents to the Daley Library if he had legal ownership himself. Odds are that he doesn't have it and never has.
Under the tax laws, if a non-profit goes out of business, it must transfer any remaining assets to another non-profit. It can't just give its assets to a person, unless the assets are transferred as taxable compensation and properly declared, or it is returning a contribution (which would be irrelevant here).
If Bill Ayres has the physical property of a closed non-profit, he MIGHT properly have it because he took the files as part of his taxable compensation (or because he bought the property from the non-profit for its fair market value), but the odds that he did so are not great. Few employees accept old files as taxable compensation, and few non-profit executives would want to pay cash for 132 boxes of a dying group's old files.
Buying the non-profit's property would be particularly dicey for Ayers, too, because as an executive of the non-profit, he's an "insider," and thus subject to stiff penalties if the IRS ever were to determine that he bought assets from the group for less than its fair market value. So if he bought the files he would have incurred a legal (tax) risk to do so, only to then donate -- however ineffectively -- the files he'd just bought to the Daley Library. It's just not likely that he took a risk to buy the files, just to give them away.
IF Ayres actually is the "donor," he probably kept the files when he shouldn't have (itself unlikely because 132 boxes of files wouldn't be convenient to cart about), and then gave them to the Daley Library. If that's the case, he wasn't entitled to keep them nor to give them to the Library, and the Library has stolen property. If this is the case, Ayres wouldn't personally have the legal authority to give or not give consent over whether the files now are open for public viewing, and under what conditions, because they aren't his files and never were.
My guess is that Ayres isn't the donor at all, even if in his capacity as an official of a non-profit he once played a role in their transfer to the library (I have no idea if he did). I further suspect that no individual person donated the files. I believe they were donated either by the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge itself or by the non-profit to which (as Mr. Kurtz reports) the CAC transferred its remaining assets upon its closure, the Chicago Public Education Fund.
The Chicago Public Education Fund is a non-profit, as is the Daley Library. As such, it would have been perfectly legal for the CAC to give its files to the Chicago Public Education Fund, and for the Chicago Public Education Fund to, in turn, give the files to the library. A CAC-Daley Library transfer would have been equally legal and quite understandable, as CAC executives may have seen the files as part of the group's legacy, and may have have wanted the group's work to be remembered.
Such a donation of files to the Daley Library could have been arranged by Bill Ayres himself or someone reporting to him in his capacity as a CAC official, but even if Ayres personally carried all 132 boxes from CAC offices to the library on his bicycle, the donation legally would have come from the non-profit.
Now that CAC is closed, any authority any CAC executive or officer had as a CAC official over CAC assets has evaporated. So, unless its staff knew nothing whatsoever about the law, the Daley Library would not now contact Ayres or any other ex-CAC official acting in that capacity to get a signed "deed of gift" or to request permission to do anything whatsoever with the CAC files.
If the Chicago Public Education Fund truly was given all of CAC's remaining assets when CAC closed, as Mr. Kurtz's article says, and if the CAC files weren't properly or fully gifted to the library (as library official Ann C. Weller implied to Mr. Kurtz), the files probably belong to the Chicago Public Education Fund.
As the Fund is a non-profit barred from electoral activity, the Fund's board presumably would want to be very careful not to make any decisions regarding document access that are less than scrupulously neutral.
If, on the other hand, the Daley Library owns the files (as it apparently believed it until very recently), its governing board will face the same need to be scrupulously neutral on political matters, assuming the University of Illinois system operates as a non-profit to which donations are tax-deductible under federal tax laws, as many universities do.
Project 21's Borelli on Civil Rights Shakedowns in Philadelphia Inquirer
By David Almasi:
An article critical of activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson by Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli was published Friday in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Said Deneen:
Al Sharpton is making headlines again, but it's not for one of his crusades. Instead, Sharpton, his National Action Network (NAN), and several major corporations that have donated to NAN have been subpoenaed in recent months by federal investigators.
While Sharpton's attorneys reported Tuesday that the criminal probe over millions allegedly owed in taxes by Sharpton and NAN has been dropped in lieu of civil action by the IRS, federal authorities remain tight-lipped over the status of any investigations.
Critics have long accused Sharpton of obtaining corporate contributions by threatening racial boycotts.
Sharpton denies this, saying "That's the old shakedown theory that the anti-civil-rights forces have used against us forever."
But there's plenty to wonder about. In November 2003, according to the New York Post, Sharpton picketed a DaimlerChrysler air show, threatening a boycott. After the company began sponsoring NAN's annual conference in 2004, however, Sharpton bestowed an award on it for corporate excellence. General Motors and American Honda also began giving to the group after similar threats.
Sharpton's not alone. Critics of Jesse Jackson claim he has perfected the art of the shakedown. Suspicions persist, for instance, about motives behind repeated generous contributions from mortgage giant Freddie Mac to Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. As the National Legal and Policy Center has reported, "Jesse Jackson's relationship with Freddie Mac began in 1998 when Jackson accused Freddie Mac of racial discrimination and encouraged major shareholders to sell their stock. Freddie Mac began financial support for Jackson's organizations and his criticism of Freddie Mac stopped."
Freddie Mac donated $150,000 to a Rainbow/PUSH conference earlier this month, even as Congress was debating a bailout of the struggling firm and Fannie Mae, a bailout that the Congressional Budget Office says might cost taxpayers as much as $100 billion.
A 16-year crusade against Anheuser-Busch for not having enough minority beer distributors ended with Jackson's sons being awarded a lucrative Chicago distributorship. Businesses that Jackson has criticized, including Toyota and NASCAR, have become sponsors of his annual Wall Street Conference...
Deneen then discussed her own experience challenging Jackson directly at the recent JPMorgan Chase and Company shareholder meeting. To read more about this or hear Deneen in action, click here.
To read the full Philadelphia Inquirer commentary, click here.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Phil Truluck is today Executive Vice President of the Heritage Foundation. He is the right-hand man of Edwin J. (Ed) Feulner, Jr. In 1973 he worked under my supervision. Then as now he is one of the most able and tireless laborers for the cause I ever have known. That year he worked day and night on the liberal's pet cause of that era - namely, land use. Had the land use bill passed the federal government would have been able, in effect, to do away with private property.
Although others took credit for the defeat of that terrible bill, I can state without fear of contradiction that it was Truluck's work that was responsible for the outcome. It is true that this bill has not reared its ugly self for the past 35 years but no bad idea ever dies in Washington. The National Center for Public Policy Research has issued a new study which contends that the federal government has found a new way to restrict the use of private property. A total of 37 million acres throughout the nation is under the control of land trusts. The best known of these is the Nature Conservancy. Dana Joel Gattuso, a senior fellow at the National Center, is author of the report, "Conservation Easements: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly." It seems that the Conservancy approaches land-rich but cash-poor farmers. In return for donating their land for supposed conservation purposes, the land owners are provided with federal and state tax breaks provided they agree never to develop or use the land for anything other than farming or ranching.
But the next thing that most often happens is a land flip...
Paul ends the piece with a call upon Congress to hold hearings to expose the way conservation easements are being abused, with an eye toward amending the law to prevent these abuses.
Senator John Warner to Fox's Neil Cavuto: "Just why [gasoline] prices have skyrocketed, we know not."
Shouldn't the co-sponsor of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill, which several independent econometric studies have concluded would significantly raise consumer gasoline prices, have bothered to learn the mechanics of gasoline pricing before creating, co-sponsoring and promoting his bill?
Warner, in the same interview, called concerns that his bill would raise gas prices "purely a scare tactic." One wonders how he could possibly know.
Ben Lieberman at the Heritage Foundation doesn't think gas increase fears result from a scare tactic.
Says he:
A recent study by The Heritage Foundation estimates a cost increase of at least 29 percent by 2030, or $1.10 per gallon based on current gasoline prices. The Environmental Protection Agency is a bit less pessimistic, estimating a price boost of 53 cents per gallon by that year. But others predict an earlier impact - a National Association of Manufacturers' study projects as much as $1.07 more per gallon by 2014.
Anyone want to pay anywhere from .53 - $1.10 more per gallon of gas just to have an outside chance -- a very remote outside chance -- of reducing global warming by 0.013 degrees (C)?
Joe Thomas of WCHV in Charlottesville, Virginia has posted a podcast online of his radio interview with National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow Dana Joel Gattuso.
Dana, as many of you know, is the author of the absolutely excellent new paper on conservation easements, "Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," published by the National Center for Public Policy Research on Tuesday.
If you are among the millions of Americans concerned about the steady growth of government, and you aren't already aware -- as most aren't -- of the explosive growth in conservation easements and how these easements are a door through which governments are exerting greater ownership of and control over private land (typically without the taxpayers knowing about, or any legislature ever voting for, the expansion), then I urge you to read Dana's study.
For a shorter summary of what the issue is all about, I recommend our press release, ably written by Judy Kent, and reproduced below.
Landowners Beware - The Government's Found a New Way to Control Your Land
Conservation Easements Not What They Used to Be, Says New Report
Washington, D.C.: Under the guise of making more land accessible for the public's use and providing tax relief for land-rich but cash-poor landowners, the government has found a convenient way to restrict the use of private land - often without the original landowner's knowledge. Enter The Nature Conservancy and other large land trust conglomerates that approach farmers or large landowners with what seems like a "win-win" for all involved. In return for donating their land for conservation purposes, the landowners are provided with federal and state tax breaks and agree never to convert, develop or use the land for any purpose other than farming or ranching.
A total of 37 million acres of land throughout the United States are currently under the control of land trusts.
However, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research titled, "Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," all-too-often that acquired land, placed under "conservation easements," goes from the land trust right into the governing hands of the largest landowner in the United States, the federal government. Dana Joel Gattuso, author of the report and senior fellow of the National Center, explains these "prearranged flips" provide a back door approach to acquiring land control that is good for the government and the original land trust, but bad for the unsuspecting landowner, who has been kept out of the loop.
How profitable is it for conglomerates like The Nature Conservancy to participate in flips? Gattuso cites their annual report, which states about a fifth of the land trust's annual support and revenues come from the sales of easements to the government. "In one example, The Nature Conservancy bought an easement for $1.26 million, then directly sold it to the federal Bureau of Land Management for $1.4 million," she says. The Nature Conservancy certainly isn't alone, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, one of that state's largest land trusts, has sold more than 700 of its 850 easements to the state and federal government.
Besides being able to take control over more and more land, "Government agencies like the arrangements because they are able to restrict activity on private property absent public approval, unlike land purchases, zoning laws and other land conservation regulations, which can draw heated opposition - and great angst," Gattuso says. According to a Department of Agriculture report on easements, "conservation easements provide opportunities for public agencies to influence resource use without incurring the political costs of regulation or the full financial costs of outright land acquisition." It is troubling that "easements, absent reforms, could evolve into the prevailing method for government to shift lands unobtrusively from private to public control under a pretense of private stewardship," she states.
This trend toward more government involvement in land trusts troubles Gattuso. While conservation easements "have become the rage in land conservation - rising in number from 740 in 1995 to 6,500 today - so has the role of government and government's influence over land trusts." Initially, the benefits of land trust involvement with easements created the possibility of an effective land stewardship program. "Yet land trusts, particularly the larger organizations, are changing their focus from independent and private approaches, to working in tandem with government agencies in an effort to assist government in controlling private lands," she cautions.
Gattuso says the biggest reason landowners enter into a conservation agreement is to obtain relief from burdensome taxes - especially death taxes, which break up well-managed lands. Tax benefits are extended to everyone, from wealthy landowners who own hundreds of thousands of acres to struggling farmers who have inherited a hundred-acre farm. These easements, however, extend into perpetuity and can become a big concern when future generations inherit the affected land, the report says. Environmentalists presently view this as beneficial, but what is ecologically-beneficial one day, may not be the next. Legal and policy experts agree these binding agreements that extend into perpetuity "ultimately become antiquated and, therefore, useless or even harmful. The rule fails to recognize that conservation needs - as well as definitions of scenic, aesthetic and cultural - change over time, and that the easement may eventually lose any ecological benefit or even become a detriment. Modern views in ecology hold that the environment is in a constant change rather than in search of a stable end-state," Gattuso reports.
Robert J. Smith, also a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research and a foremost authority on property rights, shares Gattuso's concerns. "Short-term conservation easements were once considered a method to protect lands short of fee simple acquisition. But over time they have morphed into perpetual lock up of lands in a single use. This is not only disastrous from an environmental viewpoint, because nature is forever changing - but it is also the antithesis of a free market because they preclude all future choice," he says.
Additional problems with tragic consequences arise when there are different interpretations of what a conservation easement allows. There is no shortage of landowners who offer their own disastrous story of their involvement with conservation easements. As an example, the Property Rights Foundation of America cites the case of a farmer who bought a 42-acre property in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Wanting to build a farmhouse to house three generations of his family, he didn't expect to run into any problem with a conservation easement that had been placed on the land. The easement noted the land could be used only for farming or nature conservation, and for small buildings related to those uses. However, the French and Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust sued to stop the construction, claiming the farmhouse did not fall within the parameters of what was allowed to be built on the land. A judge with the Chester County Court of Common Pleas ruled in favor of the farmer and noted the construction of the farmhouse "does not offend the easement definition of a 'small building' incidental to farming use." Construction on the farmhouse continued and so did the legal stranglehold the Trust held against the family. The Trust appealed the judge's decision all the way to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court. Ultimately, the tragedy of how these conservation easements can be misunderstood is evidenced by the bulldozing of the family's farmhouse, which destroyed the dreams of three generations of family farmers and 15 years of savings.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a free-market communications and research foundation established in 1982 and located on Capitol Hill.
Congressional Energy Diet Also Reduces Waistlines and Pocketbooks (Don't Even Ask About Global Warming!)
From David Almasi:
The liberal leadership in Congress came to power in 2006 saying they had a solution to rising gas prices. Did that solution involve prices continuing to go up and taking the cost of food with them?
When Americans decided to clean up the environment in the 1950s, there was a lot of trust in the American people. There were regulations to clean things up, of course, but voluntary action, anti-littering campaigns and appeals to our better nature went a long way.
But the trust factor has been eviscerated, and it's to no one's benefit.
As National Center Senior Fellow Dana Joel Gattuso points out in a Townhall column:
Congress doesn't trust consumers to make the right decision when it comes to selecting the right source of energy. Congress knows better. That's why legislation out of Capitol Hill is all about weaning us off oil and putting us directly on a "renewable energy" diet.
Witness the energy tax bill the House passed in February that slaps $18 billion in taxes on oil production to fund wind, solar, biofuels, and other "alternative" sources. Witness the new energy law passed in December mandating that Americans increase the use of ethanol and other biofuels at the pump to 36 billion gallons by 2022, up from 7 billion gallons required now. And witness the new farm bill that gives corn growers $10.5 billion in subsidies over the next five years, no matter how fast the price of corn rises - which, incidentally, has gone from $3.50 a bushel to a record $5.50 over the past three months.
Commenting directly on mismatched concerns over abundance and price when it comes to food and energy, Dana writes:
Even with oil topping $109 a barrel [on April 15], it is still relatively abundant. As the U.S. Geological Survey reports, there are 3 trillion billion barrels of oil reserves still available globally. For perspective, since the first automobile rolled off the assembly line, we've consumed only one trillion barrels.
Conversely, ethanol and other biofuels are extremely limited resources requiring enormous amounts of water, energy, and land otherwise used for growing food. The new energy law's requirement that Americans use 15 billion gallons of corn for fuel by 2015 - that doesn't include the other 21 billion gallons to come from non-food sources like switchgrass and corn husks - will consume an astounding 30 million acres of cropland. That means unless the mandates are repealed, more than a third of our corn crops will be diverted from food to fuel in just seven years.
U.S. policies forcing biofuel usage already are creating food shortages in third world countries, elevating food prices to historic levels.
It's worth it to combat global warming, right? Wrong.
Two independent studies in the journal Science report that the clearing of forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems throughout the world to grow corn, soybean, and other food-for-fuels will double greenhouse emissions over the next 30 years. Because plants and soil hold enormous quantities of carbon, destroying existing plants and tilling the soil releases the stored carbon.
Still in a mood to celebrate Earth Day this coming Tuesday?
To read Dana's commentary in its entirety, click here.
Fox News Reports on New Anti-Global Warming Gas Tax Poll
Fox News' William La Jeunesse has reported several stories on the National Center for Public Policy Research's just-released poll measuring the public's willingness to pay more for gasoline to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
The clip above is one that appeared on the Fox Report with Shepherd Smith on March 19. Click the picture to view the clip with poll graphics or read the transcrip below:
Michigan Congressman Wants 50-Cent Tax Hike on Every Gallon of Gas
A Michigan congressman wants to put a 50-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline to try to cut back on Americans' consumption.
Polls show that a majority of Americans support policies that would reduce greenhouse gases. But when it comes to paying for it, it's a different story.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., wants to help cut consumption with a gas tax but some don't agree with the idea, according to a new poll by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
The poll, scheduled to be released on Thursday, shows 48 percent don't support paying even a penny more, 28 percent would pay up to 50 cents more, 10 percent would pay more than 50 cents and 8 percent would pay more than a dollar.
"I don't want to pay more, I don't think anyone wants to," said Karen Deacon, a motorist.
"I think that wouldn't make any sense," said Frankie Hoe, a motorist. "Ugh ... who's making the money from all this and where is that money going? Is it going to go green? I don't see any green things anywhere."
The automobile is the nation's biggest polluter; Americans use more gas than the next 20 countries combined.
Some environmentalists and economists say pain at the pump may be bad for Americans, but good medicine for a sick planet.
But others say it wouldn't change much. Even if Americans abandoned their cars, global emissions would fall by less than one percent.
"A tax on gas is a way to reduce dependence on import oil, reduce traffic congrestion and reduce carbon emissions," said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute.
The Earth Policy Institute proposes raising the gas tax 30 cents per gallon each year over a decade and offset with a reduction of income taxes, Brown said.
David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said the proposal wouldn't help long term.
"I think when you are talking about raising gas prices, there may be short-term reduction, put off vacations, but bottom line is over long term, that isn't going to have much of an effect," Ridenour said.
While Dingell's idea will likely lie dormant until after the 2008 election, the idea of carbon taxes is not. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all support some type of system that either directly or indirectly will raise prices to penalize polluters.
Americans Cool to Action Against Global Warming, New Poll Finds
Today the National Center for Public Policy Research will release the results of its new nationwide poll asking Americans how much more they would be willing to pay in gasoline taxes to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.
Our press release follows; you can go straight to the poll results here (pdf):
Americans Cool to Global Warming Action, New Poll Finds Nearly Half Wouldn't Be Willing to Pay Even a Penny More for Gasoline; Opposition to Taxes Especially Strong Among Minorities
Washington, D.C.: Forty-eight percent of Americans are unwilling to spend even a penny more in gasoline taxes to help reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new nationwide survey released today by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The poll found just 18% of Americans are willing to pay 50 cents or more in additional taxes per gallon of gas to reduce greenhouse emissions. U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-MI), chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, has called for a 50 cent per gallon increase in the gas tax.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, transportation accounts for 33% of the U.S.'s man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Over 60% of these emissions - or about 20% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions - result from burning gasoline in personal automobiles.
"With one-fifth of all U.S. CO2 emissions coming from light trucks and cars, any serious effort to significantly reduce U.S. emissions would have to encourage fuel conservation in personal automobiles," said David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "But almost half of all Americans oppose spending more for gasoline, despite polls indicating wide public concern over global warming. These results suggest Americans' concern may not be as deep as we've been led to believe."
Opposition to increased gasoline taxes was especially strong among minorities, with 53% of African-Americans indicating they are unwilling to pay higher gas taxes in any amount. Eighty-four percent of blacks and 78% of Hispanics opposed paying an additional 50 cents or more for their gasoline.
"It's not surprising that minorities oppose higher gas taxes in large numbers, as such taxes are sharply regressive, harming the economically-disadvantaged disproportionately," said Ridenour. "An extra $300 per year in taxes means little to someone making $100,000 annually. When you're just getting by, it can mean not having enough for food, rent or utility bills."
Voters were told: "Congress is currently considering legislation that would raise the tax on gasoline in an attempt to motivate Americans to conserve fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions." They were asked to indicate how much more they'd be willing to pay on top of what they already pay in gasoline taxes. They were given seven choices: nothing, less than 50 cents, 50 cents, one dollar, two dollars, five dollars, eight dollars or more.
Eighteen percent indicated they are willing to pay an additional 50 cents per gallon of gas or more; eight percent indicated they're willing to spend a dollar or more and just 2% said they're willing to spend $2 or more.
"Congressman Dingell's proposal to raise gas taxes by 50 cents per gallon appears to be dead-on-arrival as far as the public is concerned. Even if it wasn't, Dingell's proposal is too modest to encourage any meaningful fuel conservation," said Ridenour. "Europeans routinely pay between $4 and $5 per gallon of gas in taxes and their fuel appetite continues to grow nevertheless. Just 1% of Americans are willing to spend an additional $5 dollars or more. Republicans are willing to do so by a 3 to 1 margin over Democrats."
Opposition to any gas tax hike was strongest in the Great Lakes, home of the automakers and Congressman John Dingell, at 56%, followed by New England (51%) and the Farm Belt (50%).
Opposition grew once respondents were informed that eliminating passenger cars in the United States altogether would only reduce world emissions by a fraction.
Among those who indicated they are willing to pay more for gasoline to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 58% indicated that they are less willing to do so, and 42% much less willing, when informed their sacrifice would produce little positive results.
"Many global warming polls ask the wrong questions," said Ridenour. "We shouldn't ask Americans if action is needed on global warming, but how much more they’re willing to pay for that action. We need to also ask whether people would still be willing to pay more, given the almost certain futility of it."
The poll was conducted February 24-26 by Wilson Research Strategies, which surveyed 800 registered voters who are likely to vote in the 2008 presidential election. The poll has a margin of error of 3.46% at a 95% confidence interval.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation established in 1982 that supports commonsense, market-based solutions to environmental problems.
Just a day after announcing that he had the support of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is presenting his plan for a green New York at the first in a series of state hearings today.
The mayor kicked off his testimony at the first in a series of State Assembly hearings in Midtown by going straight to the heart of the matter, urging lawmakers to approve his controversial congestion pricing plan.
'Time is running out on us,' he told Assembly members. 'We have a unique opportunity for federal money... Now is the time to do this.'
The article goes on to explain how taxpayers in all 50 states would be required to pony up $225 million so the city of New York could charge cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter Manhattan.
This brings me to my second bit of praise for Mayor Bloomberg: His admission that some taxes cost money.
If only Mayor Bloomberg realized that requiring people in Kansas and Alabama to pay for a local New York City initiative is a BAD thing, not an "opportunity." _____
Fourteen-Year-Old Worker Fined $352 for Not Filing Tax Return on $3.16 Paid in Taxes
A Pennsylvania tax collection bureau fined a teenager $352 and threatened her with arrest for not filing a local income tax return on $316 of work.
Fourteen-Year-Old Worker Fined $352 for Not Filing Tax Return on $3.16 Paid in Taxes
Laurie Hanniford, a 17-year-old high school junior in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was mystified by the certified letter she picked up at the post office in May, 2003.
Was it her senior driver's license, or perhaps something from a college?
Unfortunately, no. It was a criminal complaint threatening her with arrest.
Hanniford called her parents from the post office. According to the Associated Press, Hanniford's mother said Laurie "couldn't drive, she was crying so hard."
When she was 14 years old, Hanniford had worked part-time as a swim instructor. That summer, she made $316. The $3.16 she owed in taxes was deducted from her paychecks. Three years later, the letter said, she was being fined $352 - more than she had made - for not filing a local tax return in conjunction with the $3.16 she had paid in taxes.
The Capital Tax Collection Bureau, which collects taxes from 75 localities and school districts, said it had sent her three notices informing her that she had to file a return. It took legal action when she did not respond. The Hannifords said they never received the letters, and the CTCB's own bureau director admitted that the notices are often mistaken for junk mail.
"It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of to fine her - she was 14 at the time - for taxes that have already been paid," said Hanniford's mother Sarah.
Even though Hanniford had paid her taxes on time, she still paid a heavy price for not filing the paperwork. The teenager was forced to appear in front of District Justice Susan Day to defend herself, where she pleaded no contest. Her fine was then reduced to $77.
According to the Associated Press, about two dozen other teens received letters similar to Laurie's.
Sources: Pittsburgh Post Gazette (June 6, 2003), CBS News (June 6, 2003), Associated Press (June 8, 2003)
**Read this story and 99 other all-new outrageous stories of government regulatory abuse in the new fifth edition of the National Center for Public Policy Research's book, Shattered Dreams: One Hundred Stories of Government Abuse.
Download your free PDF copy today here or purchase a print copy online here.**
A new report (pdf) out by the GAO looks at how two different simulations affect future budget deficits. The first one assumes that spending continues at the same rate of recent years and the Bush tax cuts are extended. The second assumes that the Bush tax cuts expire after 2010 and that increases in discretionary spending is held to increases in inflation, a rate much lower than recent years.
Unfortunately for the tax-cuts-cause-deficits folks, the reports states, "Although the timing of deficits and the resulting debt build up varies depending on the assumptions used, both simulations show that we are on an unsustainable fiscal path."
Looks like spending is the number one culprit of deficits. And the two biggest culprits, based on numbers in the report, are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The lesson: Entitlement reform, not tax increases.
