1) President Obama was viewed as the first American President who truly understood the challenges of African Americans in this country. He would be the one that would finally be able to help African Americans to rise out of poverty and start fulfilling the American dream to a much greater extent than in the past.
Well, six years into this Presidency, that expectation is not coming true. According to a Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the April 4, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, African American entrepreneurs received just 1.7% of the $23 billion of Small Business Administration loans made in 2013. This compares to African American small business owners getting 8.2% of small business government loans under the Bush administration in 2008.
Thus, it appears that another Obama promise and expectation has not be fulfilled, just like most politicians’ promises. If the Bush administration had almost five times as many small business loans going to African Americans than the first African American President, disappointment is probably the mildest negative adjective that can be used for this failing administration.
2) It has been tough identifying which is the most corrupt, ineffective, inefficient, and inept Federal organization over the years. However, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would certainly be at the top of the list for their many wastes of money and ineptness.
Reinforcing that view, a recent New York Times article, that was summarized in the April 4, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, reported that the TSA spent a whopping one billion dollars to train thousands of its employees to detect facial expressions and other nonverbal clues that would identify terrorists. However, more than 99% of the 30,000 American travelers identified and stopped as being nonverbally suspicious EVERY year are let go without any charges being filed.
Adding insult to injury, even among the remaining 1%, not a single person has been linked to a terrorist plot by the TSA under this program. Talk about pathetic, a billion dollars spent for absolutely nothing. This has to shoot the TSA to the top of the worst Federal entities.
It makes you wonder why the Federal government did not trial this procedure BEFORE spending a billion dollars in order to see if it was effective. But that would be too logical, too smart for the political class and the government it operates.
3) The May issue of Reason magazine, always a good source of political class insanity, did a quick review of the insanity and wasteful spending inside of the recently passed 1,000 page Federal farm bill legislation:
- The Federal taxpayer subsidies to domestic sugar companies, which results in Americans paying twice as much for sugar than the rest of the world, continues to exist in the latest farm bill.
- The legislation creates a new, $20 million department within the Department of Agriculture to, wait for it, expedite the nation’s catfish inspection process.
- A new elaborate and complex crop insurance process will cost the American taxpayer at least $89 billion over the next ten years.
- A provision to cut the Federal farm subsidies that have historically gone to high income Americans, i.e. Americans that do not need the money, was scrubbed from the final version of the legislation.
New legislation, same old song: the American taxpayer paying billions and billions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy Americans under the flimsy guise of a farm bill. Pathetic.
4) Ever why most Washington legislation makes no sense in the real world? We may have found out one of the reasons recently, courtesy of an Indiana Senator. Apparently, Senator Dan Coats was recently sitting in a Congressional committee meeting, which is no big deal. However, he was in the wrong committee meeting and obviously asking the wrong questions before he realized his screw up.
He had the right building but the wrong hearing. As soon as he was handed a note identifying the problem, he said: “I just got a note saying I’m at the wrong hearing. I’ve got the right room number, but the wrong hearing.”
If this problem is endemic to Washington politicians, it might help explain why their legislation is always wrong and ineffective, they have been asking the wrong questions in the wrong meetings about the wrong legislation.
The embarrassment can be viewed at:
5) Its mid-April which means many Americans who work for a living are filing their Federal and state tax returns. In honor of that April activity, the non-profit Tax Foundation recently did an analysis of longest and shortest periods, by state, to determine when different Americans start working for themselves and not the government each year:
- The state where residents have to work the longest before they reach the so-called Tax Freedom Day, the day when they have paid off their total tax bill for the year, is Connecticut, where it takes until May 13.
- This is so pathetic, Connecticut state residents have to cough up a whopping 36% of their annual income on average to pay to government entities BEFORE they start helping themselves and their families to the fruits of their labor.
- While Connecticut has the largest per-capita state/local tax burden at $7,150, New York comes in second at $6,622 with a Tax Freedom Day of May 6, New Jersey is third with a Tax Freedom Day of May 4, and Massachusetts is fourth with a Tax Freedom Day of April 25.
- The other high-tax states and their respective Tax Freedom Days are: Illinois (April 25); California (April 24); Minnesota (April 23); Maryland (April 21); Washington (April 20) and Virginia (April 20).
- Mississippi is the state with the lowest tax burden and shortest Tax Freedom Day with a state/local tax burden of $2,620 and a Tax Freedom Day of March 29, a full month and a half before Connecticut.
- The second best state Louisiana with a tax burden of $2,872 and a Tax Freedom Day of March 29.
- Tennessee is third best with a Tax Freedom Day of April 2.
- The other states with far lower Tax Freedom Days are South Carolina (April 3); New Mexico (April 3); South Dakota (April 4); Alabama (April 5); Arizona (April 5); Oklahoma (April 6); and Kentucky (April 6).
- All of these states’ residents get to keep more than a month of their labors for themselves vs. sending it to government entities as in Connecticut and New York.
Our infrastructure across the nation is crumbling, our schools fail to educate, our politicians enrich themselves and their business and political donor cronies at our expense, and a myriad of other national issues never get resolved despite this huge confiscation of our wealth. If we were getting value in return for our tax dollars, you might, might be able to justify such high taxation levels.
But we are not getting good return, or much of any return, for our tax dollars, and have to live in a country where the high taxation levels cause one to pose the following question: when does taxation evolve into outright repression? Given a Tax Freedom Day that seems to get longer every year, I would say we have long ago passed from a state of taxation to a state of repression and confiscation.
6) And finally, lets consider a true insult to the taxpayers of Connecticut. The governor of the state, Danniel Malloy, has proposed having the state government send out $155 million in tax rebate checks to 2.7 million state residents a few weeks before his re-election vote in the fall. He claims that such a rebate program would create jobs.
This is a ridiculous and insane proposal since:
- The rebates amount to only about $55 per person, maybe enough for one decent dinner on the town or on large thankful of gas, neither of which is going to create any jobs.
- This $55 is less than .8% of the average Connecticut resident’s tax liability and far less than the average Connecticut resident’s overall household income. Again, far too little to make any economic difference in the state.
- Furthermore, giving a tax payer a tax rebate is nothing more than giving taxpayers back their own money since they originally earned in the first place, there is no magical incremental increase in wealth or economic activity.
- And finally, if the Governor truly thinks that giving every resident $55 back of their own wealth will create jobs, wouldn’t giving them back $110 create twice as many jobs? Wouldn’t giving them back $550 create ten times more jobs, wouldn’t giving them back $5500 create a hundred more jobs? I doubt that the good Governor would agree with these valid points.
- Chris Powell, managing editor at The Manchester Journal-Inquirer, said it best: “Bribing voters with their own money is an old trick in politics.”
Tax freedom is very important since without economic freedom there can be no political and personal freedom. The more we pay to the American political class, and the inefficient government entities they oversee for little value in return, the less wealth we have to put our kids in a better school, the less wealth we have to start a business for ourselves, the less wealth we have to give to our favorite charities, the less wealth we have to treat our families to the fruits of our labor, the less freedom we have to go through life.That is why Tax Freedom Day is so important and why a one time tax rebate for a measly $55 is so idiotic and insulting.
Today is a good sampling of acts of political insanity, from the President to a senior U.S. Senator to a useless TSA to a wasteful farm bill to a Tax Freedom Day that is an insult to all liberty loving Americans. More insanity tomorrow…unfortunately.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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