June, 2016, Part 4, By The Numbers: So LIttle Are Taxed So Much, Refugees and Tuberculosis, 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 the phrase in the search box above. This is the fourth and final post this month where we 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) According to a recent NewsMax article that quoted another article by the Washington Free Beacon’s analysis of IRS data:

• Americans that earned six figure incomes paid 79.5% of the country’s share in individual income taxes in 2014. 
• That year, Americans paid a total of $1,358,093,169,000 to the IRS in individual income taxes. Americans earning $100,000 or more paid $1,079,392,180,000 or 79.5% of the total. 
• While the top earners paid almost 80% of all individual income taxes they account for only 16% of individual tax returns.
• The top fifth of earners pay at a 14% tax rate while the middle fifth of earners pay at a 2% rate on average.
• If we include all Federal taxes, the highest earners had a Federal tax rate of 29% while the overall tax rate for the middle class was less than 15%, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The reasons to review these numbers is twofold:

1. First, to put so much of the Federal government revenue stream on so few people is extremely dangerous. These folks have the resources to move out of the country, which they have been doing at record rates over the past few years, taking their wealth taxes, and wealth creating potential with them. As they move, the rest of us will have to pay more and more in taxes since the political class has not reduced spending, continuing to waste our tax dollars on stupid, ineffective, inefficient, and inane projects and programs.
2. Second, at what point does taxation become repression? Is it fair for the high earners to be taxed at a tax rate seven times more than the middle earners? It is one thing to ask those better off to pay at a higher rate but at some point it becomes abusive, especially since those spending the taxes, the Washington politicians do not spend it to fix our crumbling infrastructure, help the homeless, the hungry or drug addicted, better serve the middle needs of our ailing veterans, fix our failing schools etc. 

Just another example of our pathetically counterproductive 70,000 page tax code.

2) Obama and other liberals seem hellbent to assuage their guilt feelings and admit a lot of Syrian and other Middle East refugees into this country. Of course, if the Obama administration had not screwed up the whole Syrian strategy in the first place we might not even have this problem but that is a discussion for another day. 

Since it is our opinion that one of the few prime and legitimate functions of government is to protect its citizens from physical harm, the numbers in the following area show that the government might be following flat on its face on the whole Syrian refugee issue:

• According to a Breitbart article by Michael Patrick Leahy on May 17, 2016, 22% of newly arrived refugees coming into this country and settling in Minnesota test positive for tuberculosis.
• Nationally, only 4% of the U.S. population tests positive for this very bad disease, according to the Centers For Disease Control
• 26% of the foreign born cases of tuberculosis in Minnesota were in refugees from Somalia.
• The Minnesota Department of health reports that in 2015, the number of tuberculosis cases across the whole country increased for the first time in 23 years.
• A previous report from Breitbart reported how an unexpected outbreak of measles in Memphis, Tennessee originated at a local mosque in that city.
• The Centers For Disease Control also found that in 66% of the cases reported in 2014 were found among foreign born people, which is a rate 13 times higher than the rate of the disease for U.S. born people.
• According to the Minnesota Star Tribune: “Today four states – California, New York, Texas and Florida – have more than half the nation’s active TB cases, though they have only a third of the country’s population. The four states have the highest numbers of foreign-born residents.” 
• Across the world, tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people of which 500 to 600 of that total die in this country.
• Treatment for the disease is long and expensive, often taking up to nine months for someone to get healthy.
• In Michigan, a state with a large number of Middle East immigrants, the rate of tuberculosis infections was up about 25% from 2014 to 2015.

Protect American citizens, not sure the Federal government is doing that when it allows anyone to come into this country without first testing for any number of diseases. I guess that makes me a racist, according to some liberal types. But better to be live racist, at least in their eyes, than a dead American whose government decided that taking care of foreigners was a more urgent need than taking care of its own citizens.

3) But Minnesota is not the only state with a big tuberculosis problem. Consider some distressing numbers from the organization, Vermont Watchdog:

• 35% of recent refugees living in Vermont have tested positive for at least the latent form of tuberculosis.
• The Vermont Department Of Health has refused to tell the public how many of these 35% have the active form of the disease.
• The 35% level, while alarming, is actually down from a few years ago when in 2013, almost 44% of Vermont refugees had at least the latent form of the disease.
• Active tuberculosis is fatal in half of the cases that go untreated according to Vermont Watchdog.

Given these numbers, shouldn’t all Americans have a say in what type of refugee program is put in place and how it is operated in order to protect Americans’ health rather than burnish Obama's legacy?

4) Judicial Watch recently reported on some new corruption and wasting of American tax dollars in Afghanistan, a Federal government effort that may be the most wasteful, ineffective, and criminally infested government program of all time. Details of their corruption investigation found that:

• An amazing $113 billion has already been wasted in one form or another in the entire Afghanistan fiasco.
• The U.S. Department of Labor has given/wasted more than $11 million on a charity whose director earns a whopping $600,000 a year in salary, calling into question of how legitimate this charity is when they pay one person that kind of salary.
• That charity, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), is supposed to provide “vocational training for vulnerable Afghans.” 
• The Afghanistan inspector general wants to know how those millions were spent but so far with no luck, the money has not been accounted for as far as what it has accomplished.
• But according to the inspector general, this is not atypical in that a lot of the $113 billion spent so far has not been tracked, quantified, or accounted for.
• For example, the State Department spent $18.5 million to renovate an Afghan prison that was NEVER used, likely because the State Department person in charge of the effort was eventually convicted for accepting bribes from a contractor.

Taking care of “vulnerable Afghans.” How about taking care of vulnerable Americans first? How many homeless, hungry, sick and drug addicted Americans and veterans could have been taken care of with that $113 billion?

That's it for this month's by the numbers where we continue to prove the reality that the Washington politicians in office today are the worst, most inept, and the most wasteful spenders and wasters of taxpayer welath EVER. 

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

May, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Broken Tax Code, Wasteful Government Spending, Saving the American Bison and More

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. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

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) As I am writing this, the country is facing the following problems:

• The economy is still so bad that over 45 million Americans require Federal government food assistance every month, wages and household incomes are still stagnant, and the real unemployment rate is close to 10%.
• Veterans are still not getting the medical treatment they were promised and deserve.
• Our schools still do a lousy job at educating our kids.
• Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from drug addiction.
• Our borders still leak.
• Our national debt is skyrocketing as Federal government spending is still out of control.
• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are hurtling towards insolvency.

But you can relax, Congress and the President are almost done addressing a real issue facing Americans. Congress has passed legislation that Obama is expected to sign that will officially make the American bison the official mammal of the United States. The National Bison Legacy Act will officially make the bison a “historical symbol of the United States.” In fact, one member of Congress, Congressman William Lacy Clay, went on record to proclaim: “No other indigenous species tells America’s story better….it’s “an enduring symbol of strength, Native American culture, and the boundless Western wildness.”

So let’s be thankful that the Washington political class is on the job. Our kids are dumb, our veterans are sick, our addicted are untreated, our hungry are still hungry but our politicians have moved boldly forward on the bison issue. Pathetic set of priorities from a pathetic set of people. 

If Obama had any class or real live priorities he would veto the bill and send it back to Congress with the strong recommendation to work on something, anything that is of consequence to the American people. But you know that is not going to happen given this President’s own set of horrendous priorities.

2) We just got through another tax filing season and most of us are probably worse off because of it, given how complicated and convoluted the tax code is. If you are feeling that way, you may want to take comfort in the reality that the IRS feels the same way.

According to a recent Heritage Foundation article by Brian Drockton and Romina Boccia, the IRS has finally admitted that the country’s tax code is too complicated to even enforce. Highlights from the article include the following realities:

• The gap between what the IRS should be collecting from taxpayers and the whopping number of improper payments it sends out proves that the IRS does a horrible job administering the tax code today.
• The IRS recently admitted as much with the following proclamation that “the complexity of the tax code makes the tax law too difficult for taxpayers to understand and for the IRS to administer.”
• As the tax code gets more and more complicated, it provides willful tax evaders more opportunities to illegally avoid paying taxes and makes novice tax filers more likely to not pay as much as they are supposed to pay.
• The complexity is so bad that the IRS readily admits that it failed to collect $385 BILLION in taxes it should have collected in 2015 and that it sent out more that $137 BILLION in improper payments in 2015.
• Taken together, if the iRS had done its job properly, the Federal government would have not added to the national debt in 2015 since that year’s spending deficit was $468 BILLION, less than the amount of uncollected taxes and improper payments.
• Taken another way, the IRS ineptness is equivalent to giving every American personal tax filer an incremental $4,000 or so a year.

Over half a TRILLION dollars of taxpayer wealth mismanaged every year. This is a disgrace of epic proportions and an insult to hardworking, taxpayer Americans everywhere. But instead of the Washington political class working to simplify and make the tax code easier to enforce and at the same time turn it into an instrument of economic growth as opposed to economic hinderance, Washington is putting the finishing touches on the National Bison Legacy Act. So much for that hypothetical $4,000 for each of us.

3) And while the IRS is probably the biggest waster of taxpayer wealth and incompetence in the Federal government, that same Heritage Foundation article pointed out some additional facts that are sure to tick off any taxpayer:

• According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), so-called “improper payments” across the entire Federal bureaucracy have totalled over $1 TRILLION since 2003.
• A whopping 73% of those improper payments came from just three government programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
• $90 billion in improper payments from Medicare and Medicaid were done in 2015 alone.
• The Federal government spent $1 billion just in 2015 just to recover $4 billion in improper payments, resulting in $86 billion unrecovered.
• The EITC is no better, with the IRS estimating that between 28% and 39% of all EITC payments were improperly issued in 2013.
• This cost the American taxpayer about $24 billion.

From these annual numbers you can see how easy it is to get to the over $1 TRILLION that these and other programs have cost the American taxpayer over the years, a trend that looks like it is getting worse, not better. But thank goodness the bisons of this country are getting their rightful attention from the Washington political class [sarcasm].

4) One last piece of real insanity for today, this one from the President of the United States. As with most quotes from today’s politicians, I can never tell if they are really that out of touch with reality or they think we are too stupid to not to believe the fantasies they weave in their public statements. 

Consider Obama’s latest proclamation during a trip through Europe recently: “I want to begin with an observation that, given the challenges that we face in the world and the headlines we see every day, may seem improbable but it’s true. We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history. That may surprise young people who are watching TV or looking at your phones and it seems like only bad news comes through every day, but consider it’s been decades since the last war between major powers.”

Really? “The most peaceful, prosperous, and progressive era in human history?” Let’s take an inventory:

• Syria is now a destroyed country and society with millions of Syrians dead, wounded or refugees.
• Russia has invaded and occupied major parts of the Ukraine.
• Major terrorist attacks have recently been launched in the United States (e.g. San Bernardino), Brussels, Paris, Turkey and elsewhere in the world.
• By one count, there were about 450 suicide bomber attacks around the world last year.
• Islamic terrorists are kidnapping and enslaving women and children across the Middle East and northern Africa.
• Suicide bombings happen on a semi-regular basis in the capital cities of Iraq and Afghanistan despite massive U.S. military and economic involvement in those countries.
• Saudi Arabia regularly engages in combat with Islamic terrorists in Yemen.
• The Israelis and Palestinians are constantly fighting each other in one form or another.
• Russian military assets continue to buzz American military assets around the world.
• China is building and militarily staffing manmade islands in the South Pacific to extend its military reach and might.
• Iran and North Korea are over seven years closer to becoming significant nuclear weapons players during Obama’s term in office.
• Violent drug cartels are de facto rulers in many Central and South American countries.
• Over 45 million Americans are getting food support every month from the Federal government, hardly the sign of a prosperous era in the world’s richest country.
• Millions of refugees around the world are fighting to live day to day.

Again, does Obama and others in politics actually believe what they say, are they that delusional? Or do they think we will believe them vs. what we see everyday with our own eyes? It is a mystery for the ages but the reality is that they are unable to face reality and that failure results in them never resolving any important issue facing Americans today.

A good start to this month’s insanity. Delusional politicians, inept and wastefully operated government functions, and a tax code that just is not working for the country’s good. At least the bison got the recognition they deserve. Much more insanity to come in the following days.

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

May, 2015,Part 1,Political Class Insanity: What $4 TRILLION of Government Spending Does NOT Buy YOu

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

We usually do not start a new month's insanity until the current month has ended. However, given that the political class idiocy seems to be increasing, we are starting May's insanity review a day early in order to get a little head start on what is shaping up as an epic month of insanity.

1) As most of us have just gotten through tax season, it is a good time to review how poorly the IRS is serving the American taxpayer. We have already reported in past insanity posts that upwards of 60% of the calls coming into the IRS customer service lines were going unanswered and those that do get answered are answered only after a lengthy delay. 

Well, the cause of that lousy customer service might not be the budgets cuts the IRS has recently been subjected to, according to reporting by the great website, Bankrupting America:

• According to the Washington Post, despite a heritage of lousy service, the IRS spent $60 million on IRS employee bonuses in 2014, an amount that could have been used to answer upwards of seven million customer calls for help. 
• The amount of time that IRS employees spent working strictly on union activity could have been redirected to answering an additional two millions customer calls for help.
• According to the Washington Post, “In 2011, the agency spent $129 million on taxpayer services and $79 million on operations support. In 2015, taxpayer services funding was scheduled to drop to $49 million while support funds were set for $411 million.” Thus, between just these two budget line items and in just four years, total funding went up more than double, from $208 million to $460 million, but funding for customer services went down by more than 50%, from $129 million to $49 million. Bad priorities or bad management?
• According to a recent House committee report, despite a level budget for taxpayer assistance from 2014 to 2015, the average wait time for calls went from 19.7 minutes in 2014 to 34.4 minutes in 2015 and the total number of answered calls in 2015 dropped from 6.6 million to 5.3 million.

Horrible customer service at the cost of billions of dollars a year. Maybe it is time to drop the 70,000 page Federal tax code and replace with with a simple flat tax so that the need for the calls in the first place goes away forever, as does the IRS, sparing the country the frustration of unanswered calls and long waiting times on hold, often for answers that turn out to be incorrect after all. Insanity.

2) According to a recent Associated Press report, two more Air Force nuclear missile launch officers have been charged with illegal drug use. Yes, those Air Force guys that have their fingers next to the buttons that launch nuclear missiles may be serious drug users of Ecstasy, cocaine, and other drugs. 

1st Lt. Michael Alonso and 1st Lt. Lantz Balthazar, of the 12th Missile Squadron at the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, will undergo hearings to determine whether they will be court-martialed. One of their fellow missile officers, who was a target of the same investigation, has already pleaded guilty to illegal drug use in January and was kicked out of the Air Force.

Taxpayers give the Pentagon about have a trillion dollars a year in their budget. Is it too much to ask for them to have an effective drug testing program so that a handful of Air Force people do not sit next to nuclear missiles while high on drugs?

3) Staying with the Pentagon and its half a trillion dollar annual budget, the Associated Press and other news sources reported that Defense Secretary Ash Carter publicly revealed that the Pentagon recently suffered a cybersecurity breach after Russian hackers infiltrated a defense computer network earlier this year. In a talk at Stanford University, Carter said the DOD was able to identify the intruders within 24 hours and kicked them out, but added,"I still worry about what we don't know because this was only one attack." 

I am not so sure that I would be bragging it took 24 hours to resolve the intrusion. A lot of damage and classified information could have been incurred and stolen in a few minutes, 24 hours later, one hour later would have been too late to have any preventive effect. Again, half a trillion dollars and it still took 24 hours to realize you had been hacked? Pathetic.

Oh, and this attack is not to be confused with different Russian hacking attacks that got into State Department and White House computer systems. Can’t anyone do any kind of basic firewall work for this government?

4) It used to be that the Secret Service was viewed as a highly trained, highly effective, and well respected aspect of the Federal government. It had the very difficult job of protecting the President and First Family, from loner nut cases and to enemies of the state. 

Well, that used to be the case. Unfortunately, even this once hallowed government entity seems to have degenerated into the same quagmire of incompetence that the rest of the Federal bureaucracy has become. In the past week another person jumped the security fence at the White House and had to be apprehended before he could do any serious damage. The good news is that no one and nothing was harmed. The bad news, why do these intrusions keep happening?

According to the Associated Press: “The [Secret Service] agency has been beset by a series of security lapses, including an incident last Sept. 19 in which authorities said a man with a knife jumped a fence and ran inside the executive mansion, looking for the president. It was the sixth time someone had jumped the fence in 2014 and the 16th in the past five years, according to the Secret Service.”

This report does not include the group of German tourists who wandered off into a restricted area of the White House or the gun shots that shattered White House windows. The Federal government spends almost $4 TRILLION a year in our tax dollars, is it too much to ask to have some decent security around a single government location, the White House? The incompetence is wide and deep when it comes to just about any aspect of the $4 TRILLION a year Federal government.

So, what did we learn today?: Despite giving the Washington political class and Federal government $4 TRILLION a year, that government and the politicians who operate it are incapable of:

1. Effectively and efficiently answering the phone calls of Americans trying to comply with an onerous and stupid tax code.
2. Keeping drug users and abusers away from launch buttons for the nation's nuclear missile system.
3. Protecting government diplomatic, defense, and executive computer systems from Russian hackers.
4. Protecting a single location, the White House, from intruders and gun play.

$4 TRILLION for insanity and incompetence. And we are not even close to summarizing the latest insanity and incompetence from just the past month.

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

March, 2015 Part 5,Political Class Insanity: Biden Gropes, A Governor Resigns, A Tax Code Baffles and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time once again to review the latest insanity and ineptness from the American political class. We do this review every month to prove our hypothesis that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. 

They waste hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth every year, they never resolve any of the major issues facing Americans today, they continually put their foot in their mouth with their idiotic statements and positions, and they operate government functions that are bloated and ineffective in delivering quality service to taxpayers. And worse of all, they have rigged the country’s elections processes so that their election and subsequent re-elections are almost guaranteed to ensure their mediocrity continues. 

To review the past examples of political class insanity just type in “political class insanity” in the search box above.

So let's get started on what has become a multi-day review of their latest incompetence and insanity. Hopefully, we can wrap up the latest insanity, wasteful spending, idiotic comments, and general ineptness today:

1) According to a recent blurb in Businessweek, in 2014, 3,415 U.S. citizens renounced their U.S. citizenship. Although this is a small number relative to the country’s overall population, consider the following points:

• The 3,415 is an annual record that has been trending upwards over the past few years.
• More than 10,000 Americans have given up their citizenship since 2010. 
• That was the year when the Federal government started going after foreign banks to give up financial data on Americans who have accounts with them. 

Thus, rather than getting additional tax dollars by pursuing them, the IRS now has over 10,000 fewer taxpayers from which they can collect any taxes from. A classic political class example where a political decision does the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, rather then get more taxes from existing taxpayers it is now getting no taxes from fewer taxpayers. 

I would be willing to bet that most of these people are high income/wealthy individuals and families who have the wherewithal to move overseas and renounce their citizenship in order to avoid the ever growing tax burden on every American in this country. These are the last types of people you should be ticking off and having them take their wealth and investments overseas. Insanity.

2) Here is another example of the Federal government doing something that results in the exact opposite of what is intended. According to another recent article in Businessweek:

• Several decades ago, the Federal government set mileage standards and targets for American vehicles, both cars and trucks. 
• There were only two categories, cars and trucks, and each category got its own targets. 
• This forced car makers to either find ways to make their vehicles more fuel efficient or sell a mix of cars and trucks that focused on higher mileage vehicles. 
• For example, if an auto maker sold a smaller higher mileage truck model and a larger lower mileage truck model, they had to make sure that the mix of trucks they sold complied with the government targets for mileage that was established for the WHOLE truck category. 
• But in 2011, the Obama administration carved up the non-car category into sub categories, each with its own mileage target. For example, smaller trucks now have one mileage target and larger trucks now have their own, lower mileage target. 

Thus, rather than getting the overall truck mix right, manufacturers just have to get the mix right in the subcategories of trucks.

For example, before the Obama administration made this change, all trucks in a brand’s lineup had to help make the mileage targets, Now, a brand can sell only larger, less fuel efficient trucks if it wants since they only have to meet the fuel target for larger, less fuel efficient trucks. This results in an overall lower gas efficiency rating for new vehicles being sold. 

This is likely the exact opposite of what Obama wanted since his fixation on global warming would want him to get the highest mileage possible. His rules out of his administration do the exact opposite, relieving car and truck manufacturers of having to hit more stringent gas targets. Insanity.

3) It is always fun, and depressing, to talk about the Federal tax code since at over 70,000 pages long you know there is a ton of insanity buried in those pages. Yet another Businessweek article recently identified just a small handful of these unreal and illogical tax tenets:

• If you are blind, you get a higher standard deduction when you file your Federal tax return. If you are deaf or otherwise disabled, you do not. 
• If you are a songwriter who sells his music catalog, you have to pay capital gains taxes on the sale amount. If you are a painter, writer, photographer or other type of creative artist and you sell a body of your work, you have to pay taxes at the likely higher Federal income tax rate vs. the lower capital gains tax rate that songwriters are subject to. 
• If you buy a vintage anything, such as a vintage old car or vintage painting, you can get a large tax break by establishing a nonprofit museum that you control, donating the art works or car or vintage anything to the museum, and then opening up your “museum” only a few days a month for a viewing. 
• If you purchase an energy efficient hybrid or electric car, you could get an income tax credit for up to $7,500. This could viewed as a good as it encourages people to reduce their carbon footprint by getting energy efficient, with the help of the Federal government and the American taxpayer. But you can also get a large tax break as a business who purchases a large gas guzzling truck, van, or SUV that weighs over 6,00 pounds, also courtesy of the American taxpayer and Federal government, by getting a large depreciation break. Thus, on one hand the government is helping reduce gas usage and on the other hand, within the same tax code, helping increase gas usage via depreciation breaks for large vehicles. Insanity. 
• A grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT) allows someone to place their assets in a trust in exchange for an annuity payment. Any increase in the assets above the annuity payment goes to the heirs tax free. Apparently, casino owner Sheldon Adelson used GRATs to pass at least $7.9 billion to his heirs tax free from 2010 to 2013, avoiding a whopping $2.8 billion in Federal taxes. 

Amazing confusions, unfairness, and contradictions within the same tax code. Unfortunately, given the the Federal government could not build a relatively simple website for Obama Care, it is highly doubtful it is capable of fairly streamlining the tax code to get rid of these idiotic and contradictory tax regulations.

4) We have often said, in referring to politicians, that the appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad, just as damaging as a real conflict of interest. That is what jumped and bit the now former governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber. Apparently, the governor had to resign because of a growing crisis that involved a criminal investigation by a number of law enforcement agencies related to the role his fiancee played in his administration.

The former governor’s fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, not only lived with the governor in the governor’s mansion but quite possibly violated state ethics rules or broke actual laws by advising him and his administration about clean energy while simultaneously serving as a consultant on the topic to outside sources. 

Oh yeah, actual or appearance of a conflict of interest, in either scenario it cost him his job. Too bad the rest of the political class can’t also be canned for similar actions that go on every day as the politicians in the country are bought and paid for as needed.

5) I had thought that we could finish up this month’s insanity today but we will need tomorrow also to finish up. However, let us leave you today with a video that has been entitled, “Joe Biden’s Creepiest Moments.” The video basically shows Biden groping, touching, and stroking any number of females associated with politicians, and their children, or female politicians themselves. If you or I behaved with strangers in public we would probably be arrested for lewd behavior and possibly assault. A politician does it and nothing happens.

The creepiest moments video can be accessed at:

http://conservativevideos.com/joe-bidens-top-10-creepiest-moments/

Okay, today we learned that: 

1. Joe Biden can be real creepy. 
2. A politician finally got nailed for conflict of interest, a sin and/or crime that most politicians are likely also guilty of. 
3. Our tax code is insane and idiotic in so many ways. 
4. The Obama administration self defeating itself on global warming and carbon footprints. 
5. And a record number of U.S. citizens saying enough is enough relative to the financial oppression and freedom suppression of the current American political class. 

I thought we would be finished with this month's political class insanity but as quickly as we write about it, more pops up. Tomorrow will definitely be the last day of insanity regardless of how long the post needs to be!

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

December, 2014, Part 3, By The Numbers: Millenials Getting Poorer, Tax Code Getting More Inefficient, and Politicians Still Out Of Step With America

On a semi-regular basis we do a series of posts with the theme: “by the numbers.” As we all know, we can really never trust any politician to tell us the truth, especially if it does not fit their selfish needs and strategies. However, while they can lie, deceive, and skew their message, the realities of actual numbers always give us the truth of the situation. 

I used to work for a boss whose favorite saying was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” By looking at the raw numbers of a situation, we can look past the political spin and other BS that politicians constantly rain down us to divide us, trick, us, and insure their continued time in office. We try to dispel these myths and travesties by looking at the reality numbers to devastate the politicians’ opinions.

We thought yesterday would be our last update to the "by the numbers" stream but we uncovered enough numbers to add one final post to the “by the numbers” series.

1) In our first update to this series we quoted a recent President Obama quote on how well he has managed the economy during his tenure: "Since I have come into office, there's almost no economic metric by which you couldn't say that the U.S. economy is better," as quoted in a recent interview with the Economist. 

We have debunked that boast over the past two days and today we debunk it further. According to an article written by Ali meter for the website, cnsnews.com on December 15, 2014, one out of every five so-called millennials, young Americans aged 18 to 34 years old, live in poverty in this country, according to Census Bureau data. 

The Census data analysis and numbers found that: “More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980. One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”

According to Census analysis, in 1980 14.1% of those Americans aged 18 to 34 were living in poverty while in 1990, the percentage of millennials in poverty increased slightly to 14.3%. In 2000, it climbed to 15.3 percent but by 2013 it reached the highest level ever recorded, jumping up significantly to 19.7%.

A lot of this poverty increase is due to the fact that today’s millenials have found it more difficult to find work. 1980, 69% of millennial were employee while that levels has decrease to 65% in 2013, the lowest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau.

So, two days ago we found out that the numbers told us that Obama administration economic policies have been bad for African-Americans and Hispanics. Today we learned that those same policies were bad for millennials. Does not seem that the President’s boast is working well for major segments of the population.

2) David Allen, recently writing for the Heritage Foundation, found some interesting numbers analyses to identify the hidden costs of our complex and ineffective tax code. The cost of our tax system is not just the taxes we pay via the Federal income tax, there are some hidden costs that end up taxing us in other, hidden ways and which inhibit economic growth.

Mr. Allen showed how analysis by Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union; Jason Fichtner, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and Dan Mastromarco, a partner at the Mastromarco Firm quantified these additional economic burdens:

- Accounting Costs. Since the Federal tax system requires Americans to compile, write, and submit their tax returns, there are additional costs beyond the bottom line tax payment. These additional costs in time come out to about 6.1 billion hours every year for the nation to fill out their tax forms, as estimated by a 2013 study by the Mercatus Center. 

These are 6.1 billion hours that cannot be spent on starting or expanding a business, finding a second job, working extra hours at a current job, etc., all of which impose an economic costs on every American who files a tax return. The monetary costs of these 6.1 billion hours according to the Mercatus study range from $67 billion to $378 billion, depending on what the assumption set is. These are billions of dollars that cannot be used to spike economic growth and expand the economy, it is stranded effort and costs just to feed an antiquated tax system. 

- Tax Gap (revenue loss). Talk about complex. According to the Taxpayer Advocate Servicer report, the Federal tax code is nearly 4 million words long. When printed, the IRS’ guidance explaining the income tax stands more than 1 foot tall.

The complexity of the tax code leads to predictable results: American taxpayers often fail to file returns on time, fail to pay reported taxes on time, or underreport the amount of tax they owe. This causes a major disconnect between taxes owed and taxes paid on time, creating a form of revenue loss known as the tax gap. The size of the net tax gap is roughly $452 billion (in 2012 dollars).

- Deadweight loss (economic cost). I will let Mr. Allen explain what deadwieght loss is: “Taxes further impose costs by distorting economic decision making, namely how individuals choose to spend and save. Economists call this deadweight loss. It can be thought of as all of the foregone economic transactions that would have occurred in the absence of the tax. This includes all of the products and services not purchased and investments not made. 

Deadweight loss is an implicit cost of taxation that slows economic growth. Although it is more difficult to calculate, estimates of this lost economic growth range from $148 billion to $609 billion.” 

The article goes on to estimate the combined cost to the country of these hidden tax system burdens. Using the lower end estimates from the three burdens above, the total burden from these three sources is still a whopping $667 billion. This is almost an additional $6,000 tax burden on every American household every year.

Since the IRS collected $2.855 trillion in taxes in 2013, this number analysis indicates for every $100 the IRS collected, over $23 was lost. If the higher end estimates of the three burdens above are used, the higher-end estimates, the additional total burden jumps to an incredible $1.439 trillion, or about $50 being lost for every $100 collected, an incredibly inefficient tax process. Additionally, this $1.439 trillion burden comes out to over $12,000 for every U.S. household.

The bottom line: our tax system is complex, expensive to operate, inefficient, and contrary to sound economic theory, resulting in numbers that are onerous to say the least on every American.

3) Often the numbers from reputable polling organizations such as Gallup and Pew show that the political class is often out of step with what Americans want done. For example:

• The majority of Americans have long disapproved of the entire Obama Care legislation and mess but it still lives on. 
• The majority of Americans have long indicated that Congress and the entire political class is broken and ineffective but the political process continues to become even more broken over time.
• The majority of Americans want government’s wasteful spending to be brought under control but the wasteful spending grows unimpeded, reaching a devastating level of $18 TRILLION at the Federal levels.

Americans want this and the politicians in Washington want to deliver that. The latest example of such a disconnect is when the Democrats in the Senate recently released a report that was critical of the CIA interrogation tactics that were used immediately after the 9-11 attacks.

But while the Democrats in the Senate were critical of the methods, the majority of Americans were not, according to Pew Research:

• Only 29% of those Americans polled said the interrogation methods were unjustified.
• A majority of 51% say those methods were justified.
• 56% of those polled feel that the intelligence gathered on terrorists’ plans stopped future attacks while only 28% disagreed that future attacks were thwarted.

Another issue and another example where the numbers show that the politicians in their constant need to satisfy their objectives are out of touch with what America thinks and wants. 

Now, some of you in the 29% might want to claim the high ground and believe that America should never resort to torture. I actually believe that also but that view is not consistent with what the majority of Americans believe. Plus, releasing the report now, more than ten years after the fact serves no purpose whatsoever:

• No one is going to be prosecuted for the methods so there is not a criminal reason for releasing the report.
• Our terrorist enemies will use the report as propaganda even though it is a highly skewed, highly politicized, and incomplete view of what happened.
• The report is taken out of context and the situation at the time. Much like when FDR locked up Japanese nationals in Word War II, the actions have to be considered in the context of the situation. Immediately after 9-11, it was unknown if other terror attacks were imminent. That question had to be answered as soon as possible in the context of the situation and the time frame.
• And one other thing to keep in mind. Those terrorists that were subject to the interrogation methods are still alive. How does a supporter of this report reconcile the fact that the Obama administration actually kills terrorists, with hundreds if not thousands of collateral deaths including hundreds of children, with its drone program? At least no one died with the CIA program, unlike the indiscriminant drone program of Obama.

That will do it for this update to the “by the numbers” series. Today we found out that millennials are getting poorer according to the numbers, taxpayers are paying a much higher burden for the antiquated IRS and tax code processes in place as the numbers show, and the country generally supports the fact that the CIA used unconventional interrogation methods to avoid a 9-11 follow up attack, as the numbers show. 

Too bad politicians do not understand what the numbers mean or choose to ignore the numbers for their own selfish gains and objectives.

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

Tax Day Travesties and Facts, Part 2

This is our second post regarding how much we paid in taxes last year and how little we received in return from the American political class for those taxes in both the quality and quantity of government services. The first post from yesterday can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/tax-day-travesties-and-facts-part-1.html

We will be showing in these tax day posts that we have truly moved from a state of heavy taxation into a state of tax oppression. Many Americans’ Tax Freedom Day, that day of the new year when we stop working for all forms of American government and start working for ourselves and our families has not even occurred yet. Almost four months into the new year.

And what we do get from the political class in the form of government programs and support is usually inefficient, ineffective, criminally targeted and often make the original problem worse or create new problems for Americans via unintended consequences. The tax insanity continues today with the following random facts about taxation in America and how it is often no more than highway robbery.

1) Consider what some of your tax payments bought for you and the country last year, as documented by the Watchdog.org organization:

• An $876,752 study on snail sex - A University of Iowa study is trying to figure out if it’s better for snails to reproduce sexually or asexually. Finally, an answer to the question everyone has been asking, a question that has absolutely no bearing on the lives of 99.99999999% of Americans.
• A $16 million tropical vacation - That was the final price tag on President Obama’s most recent holiday vacations to Hawaii and Africa.
• A $750,000 study on how kid cartoons contribute to obesity - The National Science Foundation awarded two grants totaling $750,000 to find out if cartoon characters are making children overweight. No, eating too much junk food is making kids fat, not getting enough exercise is making kids fat. I could have answered the question for far less than $750,000.
• A $2.4 million program to develop “origami condoms” - It includes male and female versions and the “first of its kind anal condom.” There is a joke about screwing the taxpayer somewhere in here.
• A $30,410 “beauty salon” in a Federal prison -At least it’s a women’s federal prison.
• Millions in drugs for prisoners -Medicare sent millions in improper payments to incarcerated criminals. In other words, bilking Medicare is so easy even prisoners behind bars can do it and not get caught.
• A $98,670 outhouse -The Federal Bureau of Land Management may have just built the most expensive outhouse ever at the Swede Park Trail Head in Alaska.
• $700 million of Obama Care promotion -Despite President Obama’s claim that the government did not “make a hard sell” for Obama Care, his administration spent nearly $700 million to promote the law. Another Presidential lie.

When you wrote your income tax check to the IRS last week, some of that money you earned went to pay for idiotic programs like these.

2) The best way to grow the economy is for private business owners to expand their operations and grow their businesses. However, any distraction that keeps them from doing that, e.g. filling out tax forms and returns, hinders their ability to do that very important task. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the average small business owner spends 80 hours each year complying with U.S. tax regulations. 80 hours a year, the equivalent of two 40 hour work weeks. 4% of the entire year is spent just on filing small business tax forms on average.

This is time that the average business owner cannot use to look for new markets, develop new products, train his staff, take better care of customers, all activities that would eventually help us all by expanding the economy. Instead, he is sitting down and laboriously trying to stay legal in the face of a Federal tax code that is over 70,000 pages long. 

In light of this oppressive task, the Chamber calculated what one could do if they were given an extra 80 hours a year. Turns out, you could do quite a bit.

• You could complete 17 marathons (if you run the U.S. average pace of 10:34 mile/hour). 
• You could go around the world 1.7 times (on a commercial jet) or twice if you were on a military jet. 
• You could go to the moon 4.8 times (if you traveled on NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission). 
• You could cook 14.5 perfect 20-pound turkeys (unstuffed, and back-to-back for 5.5 hours each, not simultaneously) 
• You could watch all eight Harry Potter movies four times.
• Or, if you are a small business owner, you could complete your 2013 taxes.

A new survey of small business owners by the National Small Business Association (NSBA) reveals that more than half of small employers say the administrative burdens and paperwork associated with tax season pose the greatest harm to their businesses. One in four business owners surveyed said they spend at least three full weeks on the annual chore. How sad is it when the American political class is the greatest source of harm for American small businesses?

If it is any consolation, a tax analysis by the American Action Forum found that even the Treasury Department and IRS are also buckling under the administrative burdens of tax season:

[T]he Department of Treasury’s paperwork burden is at its highest level in history. At more than 7.8 billion hours, Treasury’s paperwork budget has increased 1.5 billion hours since FY 2010, or 19 percent. Since 1995, the earliest year AAF could compile data, Treasury’s burden has increased 47 percent.

A 19% increase since just four years ago is a great measure of how out of control the tax system is in this country. It is a system that is robbing the economy of vibrancy and wealth and overburdening an already overburdened bureaucracy. In other words everyone, consumers, businesses, IRS are choking on the tax code with no substantial benefits.

The NSBA report also found that a the clear majority of small businesses (67%) polled by NSBA support broad tax reform that will reduce corporate and individual tax rates coupled with reduced deductions. This thought and feeling was recently captured by the Chamber’s Chief economist Marty Regalia: 

Comprehensive pro-growth tax reform is the major key to jump-starting the economy, promoting job creation, and ensuring long-run improvement in productivity, wage growth, and our standard of living. It can help us maintain our competitive edge in the global economy and address some of the problems in income and wealth distribution. Moreover, it is an absolutely necessary component to getting our fiscal house in order.

Now, all we need to do is educate the American people, elect a Congress that can work together for the common good, adopt a common goal, and convince the president that leadership sometimes requires the courage to get out and stay out in front.

Work together, common good, common goal, leadership, courage. Good luck with getting those attributes from the current set of politicians in Washington. These are the same people who gave us a tax code with over 70,000 pages in the first place.

3) We have been discussing how we get very little back in quality services from the Washington political class despite being placed under oppressive taxation. But sometimes we get absolutely nothing back for the tax check we wrote last week as shown by the fact that the State Department has allocated $1.5 million of our tax money for job development programs in distressed neighborhoods….in Belize. 

We are not going to spend money to help the over 20 million Americans who are either underemployed or unemployed. We are not going to help the hundreds and hundreds of distressed neighborhoods in the U.S. We are going to help distressed neighborhoods and unemployed people in Belize. I challenge anyone to find Belize on the map, never mind sending them $1.5 million an amount that probably will not make any difference anyway, given it is so small.

Specifically, the State Department Belize program has the following objectives:

1. “The proposal will confront the root causes of violence and crime in a creative and effective way and seek to create positive cultural and social conditions, which are the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society.” Sounds like BS and even if this was achievable, wouldn’t starting in U.S. cities like Detroit or Camden be a far better return on American taxpayer dollars? They certainly need the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society to be created in these decaying American cities.
2. “Root causes in Belize include, but are not limited to, the lack of economic development, the lack of skills and/or tradecraft, the lack of conflict resolution skills, and/or the lack of opportunity for youth.” Again, substitute Detroit, Camden or a hundred other American towns and cities for the word Belize and the statement would hold true except that it would intend to help Americans who are suffering.
3. “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security.” The current unemployment rate for American youth is almost 21%. Shouldn’t they get first crack at reaching their true potential?

Thus, you can rest assured that your tax money and belated Tax Freedom Day are helping out needy people in Belize, where ever that is.

So let’s review. Your hard earned money and ever growing Tax Freedom Day pays for such vital services as origami condoms and the intimate sex knowledge and lives of snails, it hinders small businesses from growing their businesses and economy as result of an onerous task of just completing the marathon tax forms and understanding a voluminous tax code, and it sends the money collected during tax seasons to far away places like Belize, not even trying to deliver quality government services and support to the very people who paid for it in the first place.

You cannot make this idiocy up and the sad part, we still need another day to complete the tax season shuffle of insanity tomorrow.

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