While some may have thought that the Obama tax plan would sail through Congress relatively unopposed, the reality is turning out to be somewhat different:

President Barack Obama’s call to raise taxes on high earners and greenhouse gas polluters met fierce opposition Tuesday from congressional Republicans and also a few Democrats. “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest.

When the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says nyet to the plan–fallen figure though Charlie Rangel is–you have to think that there are problems. (On this issue, be sure to check out Ben Domenech’s piece on what he justly calls “The War on Philanthropy.) More problems with Democratic defections are detailed here.

Other problems may stem from this passage:

. . . the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.

“Now, if people don’t change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy,” Geithner said.

“Nice saving account you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Effectively, the Tim Geithner is threatening people with an energy tax. Is this part of the supposed tax cut for 95% of the population?

On December 16, 1773, a group of colonists known as the Sons of Liberty boarded three English ships at Massachusetts’ Griffin Wharf. They pulled over 90,000 lbs of tea from the ships’ cargo holds and threw it into Boston Harbor in a symbolic act of protest history would remember as the Boston Tea Party.

The Tea Party was an key step in the course from resistance to Revolution in the American colonies. Less than a year after the event, the first Continental Congress presented the colonies’ British hegemons with a united American opposition — and, less than a year after that, the Revolutionary War had begun and the second Continental Congress, which would adopt the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, had gone into session.

Fourteen years after Boston, America’s Constitutional Convention met to draft and ratify the document which governs our nation to this very day.

State Rep. Bob Smith (R-Watkinsville) hopes the modern day tea parties held in Atlanta and around the country last Friday in opposition to President Barack Obama’s budget, mortgage bailout, and “stimulus” proposals will help build momentum for a modern Constitutional Convention in a much shorter period of time.

Read More →

“The Audacity of Hype.” An excerpt:

Continuing the tradition he established back when he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget has started a blog. I applaud this move if — if — it is meant to promote transparency. But while Orszag is a smart man and a formidable policy player, his blog appears to be more determined to spin than it is to enlighten.

Read it all for a discussion of Administration tax policy. For as we all know, delving deeply into tax policy is the ultimate thrill.

High earners are planning to reduce their incomes so that they will not have to pay as much in taxes.

This, of course, not only means that some people will take an income hit. It also means that an important segment of the population will be less productive economically. Cumulatively, this could have a very bad effect on the economy–especially when one considers its current parlous state.

“Heck of a job,” indeed. A purposeful economic saboteur could not do a better job at undermining the economy than this Administration is doing.

Faced with a shortage of funds this year and unwilling to cut the bloated state budget, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is planning to welsh on the state’s debt to taxpayers who overpaid in 2008 and to put a hold on paychecks owed to state employees until the Republican-controlled state legislature allows her to break state law by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from already  bankrupt state funds.

Breaking Borrowing Law

The Kansas Finance Council, which is made up of Sebelius and six state GOP leaders, is refusing to approve the Democratic Governor’s $225,000,000.00 borrowing plan because state law requires all such debts, called certificates of indebtedness, to be retired by the end of the fiscal year in which they were issued. Kansas’ fiscal year ends June 30, and the state has already taken out $550,000,000.00 in certificates that it likely won’t be able to repay. Approving the additional amount requested by Sebelius would push that debt total over three-quarters of a billion dollars with 4 1/2 months remaining to somehow find the money to  pay it off within the timeframe required by law.

“We cannot issue more certificates if the funds will not materialize by the end of the year,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) in a press release. “Without the revised 2009 budget bill, there is no way that we can legally issue a certificate knowing full well that the money will not be available to retire the debt.”

Governor Turns Up Nose at Real Alternatives

Read More →