Showing posts with label Tax Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tax Foundation. Show all posts

Sunday, April 25, 2021

April, 2021, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Imaginary Counties Get Real Taxpayer Money, AMTRAK Continues Its Wasteful Spending, and Democratic States Continue To Lose Residents.

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) The Biden administration and Congress recently threw together a multi-trillion covid economic relief plan. And threw together is certainty the right description, given this insanity:
  • According to the Tax Foundation hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been set aside in the relief package for county governments that do not exist.
  • For example, the nimrods in Washington put a provision in the legislation so that Hartford County, Connecticut’s county government is set to receive $173 million in covid relief aid.
  • Nice chunk of change except for the fact that like every other country in the state there is no county level government that could actually and legally receive the money.
  • In fact, all of the non-existent county governments in the state in total are supposed to get $691 million in relief.
  • The same insanity is going down in Rhode Island where there also are no formal county level government entities but nonetheless, these non-existent counties are scheduled to get $205 million.
  • $15 million is supposed to go to Alaska’s Unorganized Borough which is really unorganized since it is not a real county or any other kind of government, it does not exist from a legal, government perspective.
  • And it gets worse.
  • Eight of Massachusetts county governments were dissolved over 20 years ago but they are still supposed to receive $942 million in relief aid.
  • Norfolk County has an annual revenue stream of about $19.5 million but thanks to Congress, it is set to receive $137 million in covid aid, seven times its annual revenue stream, talk about a windfall.
Unfortunately, you cannot make up this type of stupidity. It makes you wonder what the Congressional members of Congress in Connecticut, Rhode Island, et al were thinking… or not thinking: are they so out of touch with their home states that they did not realize there is no legal way for these fictional or eliminated counties to legally receive and spend this taxpayer generosity?

2) Whenever the Federal government operates anything, any program etc. it screws it up, by being inept, inefficient, criminally crooked, you name it, they will screw it up. Such has been the case of AMTRAK for decades. The Federal government took over the operation decades ago and it has bled red ink and unprofitability ever since.

And now AMTRAK claims that it needs about $40 billion of taxpayer money to fix its backlogged maintenance problems. Keep in mind that the vast, vast majority of American taxpayers have never ridden an AMTRAK train and are likely to never ride the train. But rather than have those that actually ride the train pay their fair share of the expenses to operate it, Washington politicians would rather that the rest of the country subsidize a losing operation that benefits a tinyu, tiny number of people.

Now, AMTRAK executives see themselves getting a new windfall of taxpayer money via Biden’s ridiculous expensive and idiotic multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan. Let Connor Harris of the Manhattan institute explain why this is so not right: “Except much of anything Amtrak gets from the federal government will not be spent on new destinations but on repairs and maintenance. Very costly repairs and maintenance, it turns out – and only what’s needed to keep service from failing completely along existing lines…Amtrak’s claimed maintenance backlog of $40 billion for the 453-mile rail line from DC to Boston — an enormous sum of almost $90 million per mile, merely to keep the same service as exists today. For comparison, in countries such as France and Spain, less than half that cost per mile would cover a brand-new high-speed rail line good for speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.”

So, other countries could build a brand new, high tech rail line for half the money that AMTRAK wants to do maintenance on a SINGLE AMTRAK rail line in the northeast section of the country. More tax dollars wasted on a typical bloated, inefficient and inept government bureaucracy.

3) Let's check in on how the out migration trend is going with high tax, high crime states as we often do:
  • Forbes writer, Chris Dorsey, recently published an article entitled, “America’s Mass Migration Intensifies As ‘Leftugees’ Flee Blue States And Counties For Red”
  • According to Dorsey, the top five U.S. states seeing a mass exodus out of those states are all Democratic controlled, California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Illinois.
  • This is consistent with our own previous analyses where we predicted that these states, especially Illinois, New York and California, are already in financial death spirals that will see one of them very soon go into at least a de facto bankruptcy condition.
  • As more and more people flee these states because the state politicians have governed in such a way to continually see increases in taxation and crime, and a lowering of the quality of life, the tax base becomes smaller and smaller resulting in less and less tax revenue which forces politicians to increase taxes and cut public services which increases crime and further lowers the quality of life and causes more people and businesses to migrate out and the financial death spiral is in full force.
  • According to the Census Bureau, these five states lost a combined 4 million residents between 2010 and 2019.
  • Thus, while the overall country’s population grew almost 8% in that time frame, these five states saw population declines in the face of that almost overall 8% growth rate.
  • According to U-Haul numbers, the five states seeing the greatest increase in population are states with much lower tax burdens and crime rates and a better overall quality of life climate: Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona.

The formula for keeping voters and residents happy is pretty simple: lower taxes, lower business regulation, lower crime rates, and a better quality of life. However, many in the American political class cannot grasp that simple concept: rather than get their government entities more efficient and effective, they continue to raise taxes, expand government intrusion, increase business and personal regulations, put forth idiotic concepts like “defund the police'' which ALWAYS increases crime.

We have always stated that “people just want to be free.” And to do that they will vote with their feet and take themselves, their families, and their businesses to where they can be free and safe, something that is not possible in states like Illinois, California, New York, New Jersey and Michigan.

That will do it for today: financially strapped states and their inept politicians continue to bleed citizens and tax base participants, AMTRAK continues to be a black hole of waste and taxpayer money, and imaginary counties get allocated real taxpayer funds.

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:

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


Tuesday, December 19, 2017

People Just Want To Be Free - Why High Taxes and Government Over Regulation Is NEVER A Good Thing

Today’s topic of discussion, why it is human nature to want to keep the wealth that one creates via their efforts, is one that we have touched on many times before. So many times we have shown that any overtaxing government entity, and its related affliction, over regulation, drive people to make decisions that minimize their tax and regulation burden. We have shown so many times that this human instinct eventually results in strong economic growth and well being in areas that minimize taxes and regulations and weakening economic conditions where taxes and regulations are highest.

This discussion is relevant these days as it looks like Congress is about to pass legislation that will reduce individual and business tax rates. Given our experience and writings, this is great news for the economy and individual freedoms. People and businesses will get to keep more of their own wealth, and as you will see below as we review past discussion on this topic and introduce a new set of data from the National Review, that is always a good thing.

1) Before we review the latest data proving our theory, feel free to visit just a small sample of previous posts we have done that prove high taxes and extensive regulations are so negatively correlated with economic growth and vitality:





http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/state-level-economic-musings-california.html

2) Next, take a look at the following report we did earlier this year where we showed that while higher taxed and over regulated states tend to vote for Democrats, in the long run their excessive taxation and regulation drive people away from their states, resulting in not only a population drain but also an economic and tax revenue drain. As more and more people leave a state because of over taxation, the tax base gets smaller which cause state politicians to raise taxes to make up for the shortfall which drives more citizens out of the state which reduces tax revenue and at that point the tax base death spiral is in full swing:

"Benny Johnson, Jason Howerton, and Parker Lee, writing for the Independent Journal Review recently summarized what the economic conditions currently are in the states that heavily voted in favor of Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in last month’s Presidential election. Besides having the common characteristic of favoring Hillary over Trump, they also have the common characteristic of having some pretty lousy economic and out migration trends going on in their states. This conclusion is based on citing a Washington Times article by Stephen Moore.

Moore concludes from his analysis that the out migration from these Hillary strongholds is driven primarily by economic reasons including: “high tax rates; high welfare benefits; heavy regulation; environmental extremism; high minimum wages.” Amazingly, the ten states that Hillary Clinton won by the largest percentage margins saw a net loss in population from 2004 through 2014. California and New York by themselves saw a net loss of 2.75 million Americans over that ten year time frame."

As you go through the ten states economic profiles below, keep in mind that these states are almost always dominated by Democrats in elected office. Yes, occasionally, a Republican or two might get elected in these states, but for the most part these are strictly Democratic controlled and operated states. I am not saying there is a cause and effect of Democrats creating lousy economic conditions but the correlation, as you will see below is certainly quite strong."

1) Massachusetts - Between 2004 and 2014, Massachusetts lost 156,861 more residents than it gained. One reason for such a loss is that Massachusetts has a top business income tax of 8%, one of the highest overall property tax burdens in the country, and also has estate and inheritance taxes.

2) California - California has lost an amazing 1.3 net residents over the past decade despite having some of the richest people in the nation living in the state in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Thus, something must not be right for the over 1 million people who decided to leave the state for a better life

3) Maryland - Maryland has lost a net 145,000 residents over the past decade, possibly caused by the reality that the state ranks 44th in economic outlook according to the in-depth analysis done by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has a top personal income tax rate of 8.95%, and has the 13th highest business income tax rate. Over the past 47 years the state has had only two Republican governors.

4) New York - The ALEC ranks New York as dead last in its economic outlook ratings, a spot it has been “honored” with in six of the past seven years. It has some of the highest tax rates in the country and its net loss of population over the past ten years, 1.5 million people, is the largest loss of any other state in the union.

5) Rhode Island - The ALEC rates this state as 48th in economic performance and 35th in economic outlook. Rhode Island has a very high property tax rate and has had a net loss of 70,000 residents over the past decade, a lot considering how small the state’s population is to begin with.

6) New Jersey - My former home state has some of the highest tax rates, personal income tax, property tax, and business tax rates, in the country. The ALEC ranks the state as 48th relative to economic outlook and has had a net loss of about half a million residents since 2005.

7) Connecticut - Higher than average tax rates and ranking 47th on ALEC’s economic outlook measure makes it no surprise this state has lost 153,000 residents in total over the past decade.

8) Vermont - The ALEC has Vermont ranked 49th in economic outlook, the state has the second highest personal income tax structure and has enacted many new tax changes that will make it more expensive to live in the state. No surprise, it has had a net loss of 9,000 residents over the past ten years.

9) Illinois - Possibly one of the biggest basket cases of all the states, given its incredibly high unfunded pension and retiree benefit liabilities for government workers, the state does have a reasonable income tax rate but higher than average business tax rates and high property taxes. As a result, it has had a net loss of 700,000 residents over the past ten years.

10) Hawaii - The ALEC found that Hawaii has the highest marginal personal income tax rates in the country and the highest sales tax rates in the country. Despite its beautiful weather, the state had a net loss of 36,000 residents since 2005.”

The complete post can be read at:


3) Let’s now get down to the latest data that proves my point, based on a December 15, 2017 article by Jim Pettit, writing for the National Review website:
  • Apparently, Americans in great numbers are moving from states with high taxation and intrusive governments to states with limited government and lower taxes.
  • And this hypothesis holds up despite some liberals trying to tie the out migration from high tax states to climate, retiring Baby Boomers, and other non-economic factors.
  • This latest analysis comes from a recent IRS study of the latest tax and migration numbers and trends from 2015 and 2016.
  • The IRS study found that Florida, a state with no income tax and lower property taxes, saw an increase of a a staggering $17.4 billion in adjusted gross incomes in the state because of in migration.
  • And this increase in adjusted gross income and migration was not because a bunch of old people were retiring to Florida since the IRS numbers show that the biggest influx of new Florida residents, 70,000 people, were between the ages of 26 and 35.
  • This was 10,000 more than the over 55 age group.
  • South Carolina, a much smaller state, had the second highest adjusted gross income increase, $2.3 billion.
  • Not surprisingly, based on the above analyses we discussed, the states that lost the most were high taxation states Connecticut ($2.7 billion) and New York, ($8.8 billion).
  • Again, not surprisingly, according to the Tax Foundation, New York has the highest total tax burden in the country while Florida has the fourth lightest tax burden.
  • In addition, California has the highest so-called impact fees, taxes that are collected to fund schools, libraries, and infrastructure at $31,000 per household while Texas has the lowest at $4,000.
  • Thus, it is not a surprise that California loses more homeowners and citizens to Texas than any other state.
Again, no matter what set of numbers you look at, the IRS, Tax Foundation, etc., the answer is always the same: people will always look to minimize their tax expense and burden, increasing their personal freedom in the process. And most often the process is a migration from places where taxes and regulations are high to places where taxes and government regulations are low, both factors of which increase personal freedom.

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:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

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








Friday, August 4, 2017

August, 2017, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Insane In Canada, Obama's County Level Economic Failure, and Lies About the Rich and Taxation

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) The other day we talked about how HUD and the Commerce Department of the Federal government were losing tons of taxpayer money via either outright fraud or incompetence. As readers of this blog know, these are not the only Washington bureaucracies that waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year. But apparently American politicians are not unique in their ability to waste taxpayer wealth.

Consider this atrocity of government spending up in Canada, courtesy of Josh Elliot of CTV News on July 19, 2017:
  • In Tom Riley Park in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, there was a very steep dirt and rocky path into the park that led into a community garden within the park.
  • Local resident and retired mechanic, Adi Astl, decided to do something about this treacherous situation since several of his neighbors had actually fallen down the steep undeveloped path.
  • He and his neighbors collected $550 which he used to buy materials to build wooden stairs that allowed park visitors to safely descend the dangerous path into the garden area in the park. 
  • Even better, he supervised and paid a homeless resident to build the steps. Everyone wins: safety is enhanced and a down on his luck homeless person receives some money for a job well done.
  • Astl says that his neighbors thanked him, strangers visiting the park thanked him and members of the garden club who maintain the garden thanked him for his work.
  • And that is where the happiness ends since the local political class decided they could have none of this good will towards men going on on their watch and they tore down the steps, recreating the original dangerous situation.
  • The local politicians and bureaucrats claimed that the steps he built were not up to city regulations and had to be torn down and that it was their job to build the right kind of steps.
  • Unfortunately, their estimated cost for the project was between $65,000 and $135,000 for a simple flight of steps.
  • While the mayor agreed that the city estimate for the steps sounded “completely out of whack with reality,” he still stood by his decision to destroy a private citizen solution to a public safety problem: “We just can’t have people decide to go out to Home Depot and build a staircase in a park because that’s what they would like to have.”
A perfect example of how the political class and government works: inefficiently, corruptly, and ineffectively and it took a private citizen, thinking about the safety of his neighbors up in Canada, to show why taxpayers always get screwed as government gets larger and larger. $65,000 for a small set of stairs, no corruption, kickbacks, and favoritism going on here. Not. 

This is just another small example of how the U.S. is quickly approaching a national debt load of $20 TRILLION. Government jobs done poorly and expensively.

2) Obama liked to brag on how he single handedly saved the U.S. and world economy when he came into office. Of course, we have debunked that self promotion so many times:
  • The economic recovery he claims to have led was by far the weakest economic recovery in at least 80 years.
  • The jobs that were created during his Presidency tended to be low paying, menial jobs which accounted for stagnant household wages and earnings during his entire time office.
  • The labor participation rate during his recovery was at the lowest levels since the economic disaster known as the Carter administration almost 50 years ago.
  • He accomplished all of this trivial success by almost doubling the national debt from about $10 trillion to $20 trillion, weakening the economy for decades to come.
  • All of his economic programs, e.g. Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, etc. were unadulterated failures.
  • A record over 94 million American adults were out of the work force by the time he left office.
And now we can add another dismal aspect of his economic strategy and leadership skills. According to a recent article by the 538 website that was summarized in the August 4, 2017 issue of The Week magazine, “Just 20 counties were responsible for roughly half of the of new businesses created in the U.S. since the recession. That’s .64% of the 3,100 counties in the U.S.”

So 99.36% of the counties in the country accounting for half of the growth in new businesses in the country during the Obama reign while just .64% of the counties accounted for about the other half. Talk about skewed results, results that probably helped get Trump elected. When your party’s economic policies basically ignore over 99% of the country, there has to be negative election impacts which is exactly what happened. 

Makes you wonder how inept you have to be from an economic strategy perspective to incur such ridiculously skewed results.

3) Politicians, especially Democrats, always think that raising taxes will solve all of the country’s problems. They fail to acknowledge that their mismanagement of the government they are in charge of wastes untold hundreds of billions of dollars a year via inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, redundancies, and outright criminal fraud. 

If they were doing their jobs, there would likely be more than enough money and taxpayer wealth found to actually resolve some problems. Instead, their constant, stupid, and brainless response is to just raise taxes.

And when calling for more taxation, Democrats always like to play the blame game and blame the “rich” for not paying their fair share of taxes. This diverts the spotlight from what the real problem is, their inability to do their jobs without wasting taxpayer wealth, and try to shift the blame to the rich. 

This empty and incorrect rhetoric does nothing but divide Americans against each other, again diverting attention from politicians’ inabilities. We have stated too many times in this blog that no American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes until the American political class finds out how to handle the hard earned tax wealth we turn over to them everyday. Until they do that, no more raising of taxes or dividing the country along economic lines and lies. 

Because, in reality, if you look at the numbers, the rich pay far more than their fair share in taxes, proving again the politicians, especially liberals and Democrats, lie to our faces. If you look at a recent article on the www.howmuch.net website, which did an analysis using research from the Tax Foundation, you will find that:
  • The top 1% of earners in this country, the very rich, pay a whopping 39.5% of the Federal income taxes in this country; in other words they pay at a rate that is almost 40 times higher than their incidence in the general population.
  • They pay well over half a TRILLION dollars a year in Federal income taxes.
  • Those earners in the top 1-5% pay 20.5% of all Federal income taxes, or about five times their incidence in the general population.
  • Thus, the top 5% earners in the country pay over 60% of all Federal income taxes.
  • Contrast that to the bottom 50% of earners in this country that pay only 2.8% of Federal income taxes, “which is more than 14 times less than the top 1%, even though this group is 50 times as numerous.”
  • For the richest 1%, the effective average tax rate is 27.2%, meaning that well over a quarter of their income goes into Federal income taxes.
  • For the next group (up to 5%), the effective tax rate is still a high 23.6%.
  • Taxpayers with incomes in the top 10% part with just over one-fifth (21.3%) of their earnings.
  • Since 45% of American earners make too little to pay any Federal income tax, the effective tax rate for the bottom 50% of earners is just 3.5%, about one eighth the rate of the top 1%.
Thus, this kills another political class set of lies who like to claim that rich people do not pay a high enough percentage in taxes since they get special tax treatment. The above realities and numbers also prove this claim to be a lie.

Again, no American, especially the rich, should pay another penny in taxes until the political class finds a way to get smart and stop wasting all that tax revenue. And as the above numbers prove again, politicians lie on all matters, including tax matters, do not believe their insane claims when it comes to fairness and reality in the realm of taxation. More insanity to follow.

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








Thursday, April 14, 2016

April, 2016, Part 10, Political Class Insanity: Hillary's Lack Of Trabsparency, Our Opppresive Tax Freedom Day, and The Failure of Dodd-Frank

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) After seven and half years of Obama and his administration hiding secretes, stonewalling Freedom Of Information Act Requests, spying on journalists, and falling miserably short of his campaign promise to operate the “most transparent” administration ever, it would certainly be refreshing to have a President who actually is honest, in integrity, and not suppressing information that Americans have every right to see and examine, no matter how embarrassing to anyone in Washington. But if Hillary Clinton gets elected, we should probably expect more of the same thing, a government and administration shrouded in secrecy and corruption.

We make that assumption based on two of Clinton’s recent actions that provide no indication that she will be any different than Obama. It is no secret that Hilary is very chummy with and gets a lot of campaign donations from Wall Street firms and executives. In fact, she has given many private speeches to those same firms and executives for which she received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But she refuses to release the texts of those speeches to the public, a suspicious move that many have interpreted as saying that she will be very friendly to Wall Street interests if elected President. In fact, some people who heard those speeches verify that assumption. But she still refuses to release what could be very embarrassing and hypocritical texts of her speeches that would be in opposition to her public stands where she talks tough about Wall Street while secretly telling them not to worry.

And she followed up this potential scandal with the following little shenanigan. According to Chuck Ross, recently writing for the Daily Caller website, the Clinton campaign managers used a white noise machine to prevent reporters from hearing what Clinton was saying at a fundraiser speech in Colorado. This was reported by Stan Bush who is a reporter for Denver’s local CBS affiliate, CBS-4, who was present when the noise machine was turned on. 

The fundraising event was held outdoors at the home of Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democratic super delegate. Bush posted a video online of what it sounded like, comparing it to a low intensity throbbing noise, like a helicopter off in the distance. As with Obama and his lack of transparency, what is Hillary hiding? At least relative to transparency, maybe a Hillary Clinton Presidency would be just like having a third Obama term….unfortunately for democracy and integrity.

2) Earlier this week we talked about how insane Bernie Sanders is in that he actually wants to raise taxes on EVERY American if elected in order to fund is socialism/communism government programs. This insanity is despite the reality that the Washington political easily wastes hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a year from inefficiencies, duplication, uselessness, and criminal fraud. 

How heavy and despicable has the tax burden become in this country BEFORE Bernie Sanders tries to increase taxation in this country. Consider the latest Tax Freedom Day analysis from the Tax Foundation: 
  • On average across the country, Tax Freedom day in 2016, the day we stop working for al levels of government and start working for ourselves and our families, will fall on April 24th.
  • This is 114 days into the year, about a third of the year we now work for the American political class and the government levels they so ineptly operate.
  • This breaks down to working 46 days to pay our Federal, state, and local income taxes, 26 days to pay our payroll taxes, 15 days to pay sales and excise taxes, 11 days to pay our property taxes, 9 days to pay the corporate taxes,and 7 more days to pay other assorted government taxes.
  • And understand that this is a national average, some high tax states such as NewYork and California likely have Tax Freedom Days that extend into May, the fifth month of a 12 month year.
  • If you include the deficit spending of the Federal government, essentially taxes that have been delayed into the future, then the true Tax Freedom day is actually 16 days later or May 10.
  • In 1900, the average American paid only 6% of their income in taxes compared to almost a third in 2016.
  • To more fully illustrate how oppressive taxation is now in this country, the Tax Foundation points out that in 2016 the average American will spend more in taxes than they spend on housing, clothing and food COMBINED:



Besides the insult of taking so much or our wealth in the face of how much money our politicians and government waste, such a high tax burden severely impacts our personal freedoms. We have less money to start our own business. We have less money to send our kids to the schools we want them to attend. We have less money to help out our favorite charities. We have less money to live where we want. We have less money to live the lives we want to live despite working hard to get the wealth we end up giving to the government.

And as we have said many times before, it is not as if we have a lot to show for giving the political class almost a third of our annual earnings. Our roads, bridges, and tunnels are still falling apart. Our borders still leak. Our public schools still continue to not educate our kids. Our government retirement plans, Social Security and Medicare, are plummeting towards insolvency. Current political and government economic policies have resulted in anemic economic growth.

If giving government and the politicians that operate it one third of our earnings has failed, maybe we need to do the opposite, reduce taxation and reduce government’s size and wasteful spending habits. How much worse could it get? This country was formed under the banner, “Taxation without representation.” Today, taxation with representation is not much better.

3)The Dodd-Frank legislation passed early in the Obama administration was supposed to make sure that the Great Recession never occurred again. Besides being over 1,000 pages long, the regulations that have been written so far to support the law now total over 22,000 pages. It was this legislation that created the term, “too big to fail.” This means that big financial institutions and banks would never again be allowed to have such a big negative effect on the industry and the national economy that it would cause another recession and/or require the American taxpayer to bail them out.

Despite what its supporters of the law said at the time, it is pretty obvious from a number of perspectives that this law was doomed to failure from the start. First off, anything that is 22,000 pages long is way too unwieldy to be effective. No bank or government entity is going to efficiently, effectively or legally understand what is buried in 22,000 pages of government jibber jabber.

Second, if anything, today’s banks and financial institutions are bigger and riskier than they were ten years ago prior to the Great Recession. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and others are not any smaller. Although they may have set aside more resources to cover a cash crunch, market crash, or other downturn, they still are too big to fail today.

This last assumption was recently voiced by Neel KashKari. Mr. Kashkari was the main driver and developer of the Federal government’s bank bailout program during the Great Recession and oversaw the infamous TARP program (Troubled Asset Relief Program) that fed taxpayer funds to the big financial institutions and banks. He is now the President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. Thus, Mr. Kashkari has some pretty impressive credentials when it comes to knowing what is going on in the financial industry today.

In a recent speech, he boldly stated that the country’s major financial institutions are still too big to fail. That in the next financial crisis, Dodd-Frank be damned, the American taxpayer will have to rescue these same financial institutions again despite 22,000 pages of useless regulations. His solution is much simpler than 22,000 pages of regulations: turn the too big to fail banks into smaller banks by breaking them up into smaller component pieces.

Then, if a new, smaller bank failed during an economic downturn, no big deal, no taxpayer bailout. Simple, elegant and not a chance of ever becoming reality, given how closely big banks and American politicians have become: favorable legislation and treatment for continual campaign donations.

Another day, another set of insanity from the political class. Ineffective financial reform legislation, as stated by an insider expert, despite much ado about nothing, the oppressive and tyrannical tax burden in America today, and Hillary’s lack of transparency, i.e. what is she hiding? 


This is the last post in this month's continuing series of Political Class Insanity. This month has set a record in that we needed a whopping ten days to get through all of the nonsense, idiocy, wasteful spending, loss of freedom, and other fiascos from the American political class. Things are getting worse over time vs. getting better. 

Maybe it is finally time to implement term limits, for lord knows allowing the same tired and corrupt politicians to stay in office year after year is not working. How much worse could it get if we got some new people in those chairs in Congress and the White House:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com



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

Sunday, February 7, 2016

February, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: More Debt, More Taxes, More Disgust With Government

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

So let’s get started with the latest insanity:

1) According to the history books, one of the main drivers that American colonists had for rebelling against the British was the high level of taxation that the British throne had placed on the colonies. The colonists understood way back then that you could not have political freedom without financial freedom. “Taxation without representation” became their rallying cry and their efforts to throw off the yoke of high taxation led to our freedoms and liberties in subsequent centuries.

Well, according to a recent piece on the Against Crony Capitalism website, taxation with representation is not so great either. Their research found that the average American today spends more on taxes than food, clothing and housing COMBINED (click on the chart for a larger view):



These calculations from the Tax Foundation estimate that all Americans will paid $4.8 trillion in taxes to all government entities in 2015 and spent just over $4 trillion on food, clothing, and housing in 2015. The $4.8 trillion is about 31% of the total national income of all Americans. Thus, in reality, we are paying over 30% of our earnings to the “government” each year, a government that is inept, wasteful, crony infested, and generally incompetent.

Another way to view this taxation repression is to multiply 31% by 365 days of the year, in which case we find that we working until late April each year just to pay the government. Pathetic and insane, a complete contradiction of the principles on which this country was founded.

2) Given the high level of taxation and the wasteful spending that their wealth is used for by the political class, it should not be a surprise that Americans despise government agencies. In fact, according to a new survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), Americans' level of satisfaction level in Federal agencies, including everything from Treasury to Homeland Security, has 1) fallen for a third consecutive year and 2) reached an eight-year low.

Not surprisingly, the Treasury Department, home of the notorious IRS, got the lowest marks of satisfaction compared to all other government agencies. Not only are they the ones that come and take our money, they are also the agency that continues to show up as being one of the more inept ones in this blog, one that fails to collect almost $400 billion a year from tax evaders, one that erroneously sends out billions of dollars a each year to criminal activities and enterprises, and the agency that denied the First Amendment rights of millions of citizens by delaying and sandbagging people’s requests to form non-profit entities to support political stances that were contrary to the Obama administration.

"Satisfaction is linked to broader goals in the political system that it wants to maximize, like confidence and trust," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at the ACSI. "It's much more difficult to govern if the entire population dislikes you." This may partially explain why the Obama administration has been such a failure. It failed to deliver basic government services to Americans, resulting in a record low satisfaction level with government, and in this case the Obama administration. Funny how the eight year low satisfaction was reached seven years into the Obama Presidency.

3) Terrence Jeffrey, writing for the CNS News website on January, 26, 2016, may have identified another reason why satisfaction with government is at an eight year low. According to the article and the U.S. Treasury, the U.S.national debt has grown over $8.3 TRILLION in the first seven years of the Obama administration. This comes out to an additional debt load of $70,612.91 for EVERY U.S. family.

For comparison purposes, before the liberal readers of this blog go nuts, during the entire eight year Bush Presidency, the national debt burden went up just under $4.9 trillion or $44,104.65 for every American household. But given that the Obama administration has another year of debt accumulation to account for, there is a very good chance that Obama will add twice as much debt to America than Bush did. In fact, there is a very good chance that Obama will increase the national debt by the same amount that ALL previous Presidents COMBINED:



From the beginning of Bush’s first term to the end of Obama’s seventh year in office, the national debt increased $13,213,630,160,947.51 which comes out to $112,219.57 for each of the 117,748,000 households that were in the country as of September, 2015. As we said before, taxation with representation is not so great either.
Maybe if we had gotten something for our individual $112,219.57 debt burden, we could justify this type of government spending. But our roads and bridges are still falling down, our public schools still fail to educate our kids, our border is still not secure, we are no safer from terror attacks than we were seven years ago, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are still hurtling towards financial insolvency, government operations are wasteful, inefficient, and ineffective, etc. $112,219.57 for basically nothing in return. If government was a new car, we would have had it recalled as a lemon decades ago.That will do it for today’s insanity. An ever growing and crushing debt burden, a never growing and crushing tax burden, and an ever growing disgust with government and the politicians that operate it. And we are just getting warmed for this month’s political class insanity.
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


Tuesday, February 17, 2015

February, 2015, Part 2 By The Numbers: Wide Spread Obesity, Stiffed Inspector Generals, and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering that phrase in the search box above. Yesterday, today, and at least tomorrow, we will look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) We have looked at the following set of numbers before but it is worthwhile to revisit the message. The Tax Foundation did a state by state analysis of how much $100 dollars was worth in each state on average. Obviously, if the state average was over $100, than you are getting more for your money in that state. If it is less than $100, than the cost of living, taxes, fees, etc. are making it less attractive financially to live in that state. 

They mapped out their results as follows:



The states that "offer the biggest bang for your buck” are:

Mississippi – $115.74
Arkansas – $114.16
Alabama – $113.51
Missouri – $113.51
South Dakota – $113.38

The states where $100 has the least value are:

Washington, D.C. – $84.60
Hawaii – $85.32
New York – $86.66
New Jersey – $87.64
California – $88.57
A few observations:


  • The states where $100 has the least value tend to be states run by Democrats, just saying.
  • The states where $100 has the least value also tends to be the states where they get the least bang for the educational dollar based on the map and numbers we looked at yesterday, especially in the northeast.
  • Conversely, states that have the best value for $100 also tend to get the most bang out of their educational dollar.
  • States that get the least bang also tend to have the highest state and local tax rates, e.g. D.C., N.J., N.Y., etc.

The numbers don’t lie, there are just some places in this country where the schools are good and the cost of living is low and those tend to be places where political interference in one’s lives is less.

2) Inspector generals in the Federal government are supposed to be the watchdogs of government operations. They are supposed to protect taxpayer interests, make sure government operations run as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and make sure laws are being followed within government entities. They are an important piece of government at all levels, acting as an independent watchdog.

Given their function and importance, it was discouraging to listen to recent Congressional testimony where what has to be a record number of inspector generals are complaining about the lack of cooperation and transparency they are receiving from high ranking administration and government executives. A whopping 47 inspector generals were present from a variety of government functions at the hearings.

You cannot claim that you are operating the “most transparent Presidential administration ever” like the President claims when almost four dozen trained and professional inspector generals accuse you of stonewalling their investigations. It is not like one or two are complaining, almost four dozen are complaining and frustrated.

3) The Gallup polling organization recently released some information and numbers that confirm what we have been talking about for months: despite what Obama says, the economy is not in great shape. Gallup had an interesting take and number analysis. They defined a “good job” as a job that has at least thirty hours of steady work a week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Seems reasonable as far as defining what a good job is.

Unfortunately, according to Gallup tracking, right now the U.S. economy is delivering a “good job” for Americans at a very low rate of 44% which is calculated as the number of full time, “good jobs” as a percentage of the adult population 18 years and older. In other words, more than half of the adult population today cannot find or do not want to find a good job. Gallup claims that the percentage has to be at least 50% if we are to ever create 10 million new, “good jobs” to restore and replenish the middle class in this country.

Very discouraging numbers relative to quality employment in this country. But we already knew that from previous discussions, this is just another way to prove our point. What is really discouraging and scary is that a few days after this analysis and these numbers were published, the head of the Gallup organization publicly came out and said that he was worried for his life since these numbers did not support the administration’s spin and position on the economy:


When an American citizen is worried about dying relative to telling the truth in his mind on the performance of the government and the political class, then we are really in danger from a freedom and Constitution perspective.

4) Two more numbers before we finish today, we will finish up our “by the numbers” tomorrow. Numerous times in this blog we have proven that Obama Care will fail because it implemented a wacky health insurance program that did not address any of the underlying root causes of our country’s high health care costs. 

One of those unaddressed root causes of our high health care costs is the reality that Americans are overweight which leads to all kinds of related health care costs. How obese? According to a recent article in The Week magazine, fully one third of Americans are obese, not overweight, obese, and this obesity results in $147 billion in medical care costs every year.

Think about that number, $147 billion. If we could eliminate the obesity problem in this country, then we could take $147 billion out of the health care costs in this country or about $1,300 every year for every U.S. household. That would certainly be more savings for every household than what Obama Care failed to deliver. 

So what did the numbers tell us about reality today:
  • Some states deliver far more value for $100 than other states.
  • Four dozen inspector generals cannot do their job because of the stubbornness and cover ups of the Obama administration.
  • A Gallup executive fears for his life for only revealing the truth about some economic numbers.
  • And finally, root causes such as widespread obesity cause our health care cost problems, to the tune of almost $150 billion a year.
One more set of “by the numbers” tomorrow where we will conclude our review of reality, as defined by real numbers, as opposed to political fantasies as defined by politicians’ lies.

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