April, 2015, Part 6,Political Class Insanity: Tax Freedom Day Despair, Massive Conflict Of Interest and Coal Fallacies

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that has cropped up over the past 30 days or so. As regular readers of this blog know, political class insanity comes in many different forms including, but not limited to, the following craziness:

• Spending taxpayer wealth on idiotic programs and projects.
• Wasting taxpayer wealth on their own selfish financial and political needs.
• Implementing legislation to resolve problems that make the original problems worse or which created unintended bad consequences as a result of their legislation.
• Implementing legislation that supports their political donors and financial backers rather than the typical American citizen.
• Issuing idiotic and stupid comments.
• Overseeing government organizations that are incompetent, inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful of taxpayer wealth.

As always, we identified new forms of insanity over the past week or so as we reviewed the past ineptness coming out of Washington and other bastions of American politicians. We will finally get through all of the latest insanity below:

1) According to a recent New York Times article, that was reviewed in the March 13, 20915 issue of The Week magazine, since Mary Jo White became chairwoman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), she has had to recuse herself from more than four dozen current SEC investigations, many of which involve Wall Street firms, in order to avoid conflict of interest potential. 

She is a former Wall Street lawyer and her husband works for a corporate law firm. The four dozen cases involve former or current Wall Street clients of both her and her husband. Tough to do your job when you are so deeply involved in the industry you are supposed to oversee that you have to stay out of the very investigations you are supposed to be managing. Maybe she was not the best choice for the job.

2) A famous quotation from early in our history was “no taxation without representation” and it was part of the rallying cry for the American Revolution against England, the over taxation of American citizens. A recent, cynical spinoff of that quote is “taxation with representation isn’t so great either.” That was driven by the high amount of taxation every American faces from all levels of government. 

Well, it turns out that 2015 will be another bad year for taxation since the “Tax Freedom Day," the day when Americans stop working for the government and the political class and start working for themselves and their families worsened again. According to the latest analysis from the Tax Foundation:

• The national Tax Freedom Day in 2015 is April 24.
• This is a day later than Tax Freedom Day in 2014.
• For comparison, in 1900, the Tax Freedom Day was January 22.
• Americans will pay $3.38 trillion in Federal taxes and $1.57 trillion in state and local taxes this year, for a total of more than $4.8 trillion, or 31 percent of the nation's income. 
• If you were to spread that tax burden evenly across every American household, the individual household portion would be over $40,000 each.
• In total, American taxpayers will spend more on taxes in 2015 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.
• Taxpayers will work 43 days this year to pay all levels of income taxes, 26 days to pay payroll taxes, 15 days for sales and excise taxes, 12 days for corporate income taxes, 11 days for property taxes, and seven days for estate and inheritance taxes, custom duties, and other levies.
• The latest-ever Tax Freedom Day was May 1, 2000 so we are close to the all time record.
• Tax Freedom Day varies by state with Tax Freedom Day arriving the latest in Connecticut and New Jersey, May 13, and in New York on May 11.
• The earliest Tax Freedom Day in Louisiana (April 2), Mississippi (April 4), and South Dakota (April 8).
• "Tax Freedom Day gives us a vivid representation of how much we pay for the goods and services provided by governments at all levels," Tax Foundation economist Kyle Pomerleau said in a release. "Arguments can be made that the tax bill is too high or too low, but in order to have an honest discussion, it's important for taxpayers to understand the cost of government."

Truly insane how much we are taxed in what is supposed to be a free country with minimal government interference in our lives. Given the $40,000 per household calculation done above, ask yourself: are you getting $40,000 worth of services and benefit back from any level of government? How much more freedom would you have to send your kids to better schools, have a better vacation, start your own business, give more to charities, etc. if you could just keep half of that $40,000? 

This is a prime example of why you cannot have personal and political freedom if you do not have economic freedom. The first step towards what this country should be about was outlined in Step 1 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” which called for a 50% reduction in all government spending over a five year period. This would force government and the politicians that operate it to become more efficient with our tax dollars and get our Tax Freedom Day down to a saner level than what is has become.

3) I always love it when politicians do not look at the underlying numbers and realities of their faulty reasoning and policies. In fact, if you enter the phrase, “by the numbers” in the search box above, you will see a whole host of previous posts that examined the numbers that truly define what is going on rather than relying on the spin and deceptions of politicians. 

Consider the faulty reasoning of the Al Gore types and other global warming advocates, including President Obama, when it comes to using coal as an energy course. It is not a secret that Obama has never liked the coal industry and his plans to reduce U.S. carbon emissions another 15% or so is mostly going to be accomplished by forcing the coal industry to repress its energy production.

But that will just be only an incremental reduction in the current emissions of the the U.S.’s 600 coal fired plants. However, according to an article in the March 27, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, China, which currently gets 70% of its electricity from burning coal, plans on building 363 additional coal plans in the near future. 

India, which has 340 million people who currently do not have access to electricity, plans on building 455 coal fired power plants. Thus, China and India are planning to bring at least 818 new coal fired plants online while Obama wants to reduce the output of 600 U.S. plants. 

Thus, you can see how even if the U.S. does reduce its carbon footprint by 15%, that reduction will be overwhelmed by over 800 new power plants in just two other countries. This will cause the cost of electricity to go up for American businesses and customers, depressing our economic growth, while the rest of the world inflicts far more carbon impacts that increases their economic growth. Insanity.

That wraps up this month's insanity. Six days of stupid government programs, wasteful spending, over taxation for under performance, and a whole host of other forms of insanity. Please consider visiting our term limits website at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, really, how much worse from a political insanity perspective could it get if we replaced every Washington politician with a new person. Hard to see how much worse it could get.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w