Day 7: Eight Days Of Logic and Sanity That Prove Raising Taxes Is Just Plain Stupid

This is the seventh in an eight post series to show how utterly stupid it is for any American, rich or poor, to pay another penny in taxes, given how incompetent our political class and the government functions it operates are. From wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every run through the ineptly run Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs to an IRS that fails to collect hundreds of billions of dollars every year from tax evaders to a Navy ships that are never used to consulate buildings that are never occupied, the waste is never ending.

That is why the American pubic should demand competency from our politicians. BEFORE anyone gives them an extra cent in taxes. Tomorrow, we will prove that it is possible to make the Federal government $9 TRILLION more efficient over the next ten years without raising taxes, it is that simple.

However, today we will look at some hard core economic examples to show that even if the government does raise taxes, it rarely, if ever, works out well in the end. These are not economic theories, these are actual economic results that show raising taxes is never a good thing for the economy and its citizens and rarely gets government spending under control.

Before we talk again about how stupid it is to raise taxes on wealthy earners, let me put things in perspective, from a personal basis. A couple of disclaimers up front before anyone gets into a snit. I am not close to being a high earning American. My family pays our income taxes to the Federal government at the 15% marginal tax bracket. I live in a typical suburban, middle class home of about 2,000 square feet. I drive a eight year old vehicle and my wife drives a six year old vehicle. Thus, what I am about to talk about is not because I have any financial stake in how the rich are taxed.

Let’s start with a case of raising tax rates but getting less in tax revenue that actually occurred once upon a time in Maryland. A number of years ago, the Maryland state government decided to raise the state income tax rate on millionaires living in the state, expecting to annually get an additional $106 million worth of tax revenue from the tax increase on millionaire earners.

However, when the tax returns were tabulated a few short years later, it turned out that rather than gaining $106 million more in tax revenue from millionaires, the state actually ended up getting $257 million less in tax revenue from millionaires (Wall Street Journal - March 12, 2010). The number of millionaires filing Maryland taxes actually dropped by 30% as a possible result of 1) some died and did not need to file, 2) some had bad economic years and did not make a million dollars and 3) some moved out of Maryland into states that were more tax friendly.

If I was betting, I would bet the third factor was the biggest component since: I doubt 30% of the millionaires all died in one year and I doubt 30% all of a sudden did not make a million dollars, especially since the article did not report similar drops of income for millionaires in the 30% range in surrounding states.

Was it fair to make the rich in Maryland pay more in taxes? I do not know, that is a subjective judgment. However, understand that by making Maryland millionaires pay more, many of them took themselves and their families, and possibly their businesses, elsewhere, along with their tax receipts. They also took their disposable income that they may have spent on Maryland restaurants, movies, clothes, cars, etc. The state government may have lost $257 million in tax revenue directly but the state as a whole probably lost a lot more in disposable income and jobs. Higher tax rates was stupid since it reduced the overall tax collection volumes.

The same thing happened in Britain when it raised the top tax rates on wealthy British earners. The British government actually saw tax revenues go down from this high income group. A December 9, 2012 NewsMax article documented what happened:

• In the 2009-2010 tax year in Britain, more than 16,000 people reported annual income of more than 1 million pounds (equal to about $1.6 million).
• In 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a member of the Labor Party, implemented a new 50% top income tax rate for high-income earners.
• Shortly after that, the number of British citizens reporting income of at least 1 million pounds fell to 6,000.
• “It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes,” The Telegraph reported, a major British newspaper.
• Harriet Baldwin, a Conservative member of Parliament, said: “Labor’s ideological tax hike led to a tax cull of millionaires.”
• Instead of raising revenue, the tax hike cost the U.K. 7 billion pounds ($11.2 billion) in lost revenue.
• Now, the government of Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that it will lower the top rate from 50% to 45%, a move the Labor Party officials have called a “tax cut for millionaires.”
• Since Cameron’s government announced the lower top rate, the number of Britons reporting income of at least 1 million pounds has risen to 10,000, about a 66% increase.

Raise taxes, less tax revenue, two real life examples of what will likely happen if Obama keeps harping on “taxing the rich.” He will end up with less government revenue, still have the same out of control spending problem and rely more and more on middle and lower class taxpayers to make up the difference.

Whether it is at state level or a country’s national level, people will try to minimize their pain of taxes, whether it is moving out of state or out of the country, putting their wealth into tax shelters or non taxable assets, or just doing a tax evasion dance altogether (given that the IRS fails to collect over $380 billion from tax evaders today, this last option might be pretty low risk, at least in the U.S.).

But raising taxes and getting less government tax revenue does apply only to income tax rates. Consider what is happening in the area of cigarette smuggling and how raising cigarette taxes actually reduces government tax revenue without solving the problem of people killing themselves via tobacco. The following details come from the same NewsMax article cited above, based on information from an article in the Economist:

• Since 2007, at least 27 states have raised their cigarette taxes to erase deficits or cover healthcare costs. In New York, the tax on cigarettes is $4.35 a pack, and an additional tax in New York City boosts the total to $5.85 a pack.
• However, the cigarette tax in Virginia is just $.30 a pack, so smugglers can buy bulk quantities of cigarettes in Virginia and sell them in New York and other high-tax states at a huge profit.
• This smuggling process is a racket known to police as “smurfing,” according to The Economist.
• The math is simple and attractive: A pack of cigarettes legally sold at retail in NYC is $5.55 more expensive than a pack sold in Virginia, all other things being equal. Thus, there is a whopping $5.55 gross margin profit on each pack that a smuggler can work with when buying in Virginia and selling in New York.
• Other low-tax states include Louisiana (36 cents), Georgia (37 cents), and North Carolina (45 cents), while Rhode Island imposes a $3.46 tax, and Connecticut a $3.40 levy.
• According to the article, in New Jersey, which imposes a tax of $2.70 per pack, about 40% of all cigarettes are reportedly smuggled in from Virginia and other states.
• Thus, raising state government taxes on cigarettes in New Jersey probably cost the state a lot of money since the revenue base on cigarette sales went down 40%.
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that illegal cigarette sales cost local, state and federal governments nearly $10 billion a year.
• Profit margins for cigarette smugglers are better than from cocaine, heroin, marijuana or guns, according to the Virginia State Crime Commission, and criminal penalties are far lighter than for drugs — five years in jail under Federal law, compared to possible life in prison for smuggling heroin.
• Virginia recently made it illegal to buy and possess, with intent to sell elsewhere, more than 5,000 cigarettes.
• But smugglers can easily fit 600 cartons, 120,000 cigarettes, in a car, which makes it easy for law enforcement to miss.
• If there are 10 packs of cigarettes in a carton, and the tax difference gross margin is $5.50 a pack, just one car load has the potential for a gross margin haul of over $3,000 before expenses.
• Pack up an SUV or truck and you are likely into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per haul.
• Interstate 95 earned the moniker “iron highway” when gun-running along the Atlantic Coast was at its peak, The Economist adds, but now “it is the new Tobacco Road.”

Rather than solve the root cause of cancer deaths from cigarette smoking, government and the political class take the easy but incorrect route of raising taxes. This leads to less tax revenue but no less smoking, as criminal elements take advantage of the raised taxes to skim profits for themselves. To solve this problem you have to change the behavior, not raise taxes.

Same thing with out of control government spending. You do not solve the problem by raising taxes, you solve the problem by changing the bad behavior, spending too much.

Consider another example, this one from Illinois. A primary driver of the chronic Illinois state budget deficit is a state employee public pension liability of $80 billion. Unfortunately, the state political class has so mismanaged the financial aspects of the pension program that only about 51% of the $80 billion pension liability is funded. This is the lowest coverage of any state in the union.

To combat these budget shortfalls, about a year ago the Illinois state government raised corporate taxes from 7.3% to 9.5%, a 30% increase, and increased the personal income tax rate from 3% to 5%, a 67% increase. The new state corporate tax rate gave the state the seventh highest corporate tax rate in the country.

However, the state government did not address the real root causes of their problems. It was not that they did not tax their state residents and businesses enough, the state politicians were spending too much relative to their tax streams. One could have predicted at that time that this was not going to end well since both businesses and individuals had the option of moving to less taxing states.

According to news reports several months after the higher tax rates took effect, at least six states were actively courting large businesses that were currently located in Illinois, trying to get these businesses to relocate their businesses and the related jobs to their states. As a result, these same businesses are using the out-of-state courting to pressure the Illinois state government for large tax breaks in return for them not leaving the state:

• Motorola was offered $100 million in state tax breaks to keep its operations and 3,000 employees within Illinois.
• The truck and engine company Navistar has already received $65 million to stay in Illinois.
• Sears has threatened to move its 6.000 employees out of Illinois unless the tax incentives it currently enjoys, courtesy of the state government and residents, is renewed when they expire in 2012. The state of Ohio has already offered Sears a package of tax breaks worth $400 million if Sears was to relocate to that state.
• CME Group, which operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and CBOE, another financial trading company, are also asked for tax relief.

Thus, the state is putting itself right back where it started. It raised tax rates and businesses threatened to leave the state or actually left the state, reducing overall tax revenue despite higher tax rates. The state had to bribe some of these larger businesses to stay in Illinois, offsetting a lot of the revenue it gathered from the higher tax rates.

Sound familiar? The Illinois state politicians never solved the root cause of their budget deficits, they spend too much money. They mistakenly raised taxes and immediately had to turn around and return some of those increased taxes to keep businesses in the state. Thus, higher tax rates, lower tax revenue, and still budget deficits.

One last example that is starting to unfold, this one in California.
However, first let’s set the stage for what happened in that state last month:

• In November, Californians voted on Proposition 30 which raised the tax rates on a whole slew of California state taxes including taking the top income tax rate to well over 10%, the highest in the country, and raising the sales tax rate.
• During the run up to that election, Gov. Jerry Brown and supporters of proposition campaigned and assured voters that there was no possibility at all that raising state taxes again, this time to astronomical heights, would drive away any of the state’s businesses or wealthier citizens.
• Brown went so far to commission a study from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality which, not surprisingly, found that millionaires would rather stay put than let even higher tax rates drive them away.
• The California mainstream media backed up these assumptions with stories assuring readers that California could continue to tax the rich without any dire consequences.

Their sales pitch and promotion campaign worked since the proposition was passed. But last week, State Controller John Chiang announced that the state’s revenue for November came in a whopping $806.8 million under projections. This is more than 10% under budget for the month.

The breakdown of the trouble is a very high $842.5 million plunge in personal income taxes, $187.8 million decrease in corporate taxes, offset by an increase of $99 million in sales taxes. Now, one month of very, very bad tax revenue results immediately after the election, and before the tax raises have actually taken effect, is not a trend.

For all we know, this is just a one time anomaly in the tax revenue stream and we will see that Brown and the state legislature was right to raise taxes. But, based on the experiences in Illinois, England and Maryland, do not be surprised if the same situation occurs here, richer people and businesses doing what is right for themselves and shielding their wealth from the higher rates.

Whether it is moving, switching to non-taxable investments, or just evading taxes altogether, this is not likely to end well for the people of California. Why? Because the root cause of the California budget problems is not enough tax revenue, it is too much spending.

The lesson to the political class that run the different levels of government and the people that vote them in: running a low debt, low tax government operation is the best way to have a growing population, a growing economy, steady job creation, and stability. Anything else is stupid, no matter how fair or unfair you think it is and regardless of what President Obama says. Because let’s face it, his economic track record is a pretty sorry record:

1. Failed economic stimulus program
2. Failed Cash For Clunkers program
3. Failed Cash For Appliances program
4. Failed HARP mortgage salvation program
5. Failed alternative energy investment programs
6. Failed small business investment incentive program
7. Failed financial industry reform legislation (Dodd-Frank)
8. Failed health care reform legislation (Obama Care)

Tomorrow, we solve the entire economic problem facing the country, without raising taxes.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Day 6: An Eight Part Series Of Logic And Sanity That Prove Raising Taxes On Any American Is Just Plain Stupid

This is the sixth in a series of posts that prove without a doubt that President Obama’s insistence at raising taxes on certain Americans, in this time of lousy economic performance, is short sighted, boneheaded, and idiotic. The Federal government that President Obama oversees as chief of the executive branch wastes hundreds of billions of dollars every year, as we have documented and discussed over the past five days:

• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid waste well over $200 billion a year due to wasteful spending, inefficient operations and widespread criminal fraud.
• The IRS admits that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders across the country.
• The President’s own deficit reduction commission identified over $100 billion a year in Defense Department spending that could be eliminated without endangering our national defense.
• This week we have pointed out examples of billions of dollars being wasted in the past few years by many Federal departments including the Navy that spent $300 million dollars on two ships it never used, the State Department that spent $80 million on an Afghan consulate building it will never use, the TSA that has almost $200 million in airport security equipment sitting in warehouses it will never use, etc.

Yes, every level of government in this country and its occupying political class faction spend and waste far too much taxpayer wealth for the benefits taxpayers receive back. But how much in taxation do we pay? That is our topic today, a documenting of how far reaching and disgusting the taxation level in this country has become. After understanding the extent of this oppression, you decide whether or not we are getting good value for the oppression.

Rather than review some of our past posts as we have done in the five previous parts of this series, consider the PARTIAL list of taxes that Americans pay, as compiled by:

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Show_This_To_Anyone_That_Believes_That_Taxes_Are_Too_Low/22964/0/38/38/Y/M.html


#1 Building Permit Taxes

#2 Capital Gains Taxes

#3 Cigarette Taxes

#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)

#5 Dog License Taxes

#6 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)

#7 Federal Unemployment Taxes

#8 Fishing License Taxes

#9 Food License Taxes

#10 Gasoline Taxes

#11 Gift Taxes

#12 Hunting License Taxes

#13 Inheritance Taxes

#14 Inventory Taxes

#15 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

#16 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

#17 Liquor Taxes

#18 Luxury Taxes

#19 Marriage License Taxes

#20 Medicare Taxes

#21 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare

#22 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don’t buy “qualifying” health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)

#23 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income that goes into effect next year)

#24 Property Taxes

#25 Recreational Vehicle Taxes

#26 Toll Booth Taxes

#27 Sales Taxes

#28 Self-Employment Taxes

#29 School Taxes

#30 Septic Permit Taxes

#31 Service Charge Taxes

#32 Social Security Taxes

#33 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)

#34 Tanning Tax (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)

#35 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes

#36 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes

#37 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes

#38 Telephone State And Local Taxes

#39 Tire Taxes

#40 Tolls (another form of taxation)

#41 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)

#42 Utility Taxes

#43 Vehicle Registration Taxes

#44 Workers Compensation Taxes

#45 Federal Income Taxes

#46 State Income Taxes

#47 Local Income Taxes

Granted, not all Americans pay all of these taxes. However, I would bet most Americans pay at least a dozen of them as they go through life. I pay at least twenty of these taxes and I bet you do also.

But the insanity does not stop in just the amount of things we pay taxes on or for. The article from www.blacklisted.com goes on to review some more insanity of our taxation oppression (the link above contains additional links that verify the accuracy of the following assertions):

1. Thanks to Proposition 30, many high income residents of California will be paying marginal income tax rates of 51.9% in 2013 if the fiscal cliff is not avoided. Keep in mind that the 51.9% figure only includes federal and state income taxes. It does not count any of the dozens of other taxes that we pay each year. Thus, some Americans in California will be paying more than half of their income at some point to dysfunction government entities in Sacramento and Washington.

2. If a fiscal cliff deal is not reached, many residents of New York and Hawaii will also be paying marginal income tax rates of more than 50%.

3. If Americans fully funded the government through their taxes without any government borrowing, the average American would have to work for 197 days just to meet the expenses incurred by government. This is not taxation, this really is approaching slavery when you have to work 197 days out of the 250 days a year to pay for government expenses.

4. The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long. This is a prime reason why tax evasion is so high, too many loopholes, too much complication.

5. According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with Federal tax requirements each year. Imagine what our society would look like if all of that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.

6. 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.

7. There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. This comes out to 1.2 tax changes EVERY DAY for ten straight years. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.

8. According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.

9. Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.

10. In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.

11. The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes. That is incredibly inefficient.

12. According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, “Tax Freedom Day” came on January 22nd.

13. When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.

14. Residents of New Jersey pay $1.64 in taxes for every $1.00 of federal spending that they get back.

15. The United States is the only nation on the planet that tries to tax citizens on what they earn in foreign countries.

16. According to Forbes, the 400 highest earning Americans pay an average federal income tax rate of just 18 percent.

17. Warren Buffett had an effective federal income tax rate of just 17.4% for 2010.

18. The top 20% of all income earners in the United States pay 86% of all federal income taxes.

19. Sadly, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38% of the Federal budget.

20. The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world (35%). In Ireland, the corporate tax rate 12.5%. This is causing thousands of corporations to move operations out of the United States and into other countries.

21. Some tax havens are doing a booming business in setting up sham headquarters for U.S. corporations. For example, the city of Zug, Switzerland only has a population of 26,000 people but it is the headquarters for 30,000 companies.

22. In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.

23. In a previous article, I discussed how many of our largest corporations make huge profits and yet pay less than nothing in taxes….

What U.S. corporations are able to get away with is absolutely amazing.

The following figures come directly out of a report by Citizens for Tax Justice. These are combined figures for the tax years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

During those three years, all of the corporations below made a lot of money. Yet all of them paid net taxes that were below zero for those three years combined.

How is that possible? Well, it turns out that instead of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money back.

So for these corporations, their rate of taxation was actually below zero.

If you have not seen these before, you are going to have a hard time believing some of these statistics…..

*Honeywell*

Profits: $4.9 billion

Taxes: -$34 million

*Fed Ex*

Profits: $3 billion

Taxes: -$23 million

*Wells Fargo*

Profits: $49.37 billion

Taxes: -$681 million

*Boeing*

Profits: $9.7 billion

Taxes: -$178 million

*Verizon*

Profits: $32.5 billion

Taxes: -$951 million

*Dupont*

Profits: $2.1 billion

Taxes -$72 million

*American Electric Power*

Profits: $5.89 billion

Taxes -$545 million

*General Electric*

Profits: $7.7 billion

Taxes: -$4.7 billion

Are you starting to get the picture?

24. Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, but not a single penny went to the U.S. government.

25. If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

26. The number of traffic accidents spikes each year right around April 15th. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….

Deaths from traffic accidents around April 15, traditionally the last day to file individual income taxes in the U.S., rose 6 percent on average on each of the last 30 years of tax filing days compared with a day during the week prior and a week later, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

27. The elite are not stupid. They are not just going to sit there and let our politicians tax them into oblivion. In fact, many of them will openly cheat if that is what it takes to avoid taxes. Most of them have become masters at avoiding taxes or they have hired people that do that kind of work for them. According to the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands.

28. It has been reported that 80 percent of all international banking transactions involve offshore banks. A whopping1.4 trillion dollars is being held in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands alone.

29. An article that appeared in the Guardian estimated that a third of all the wealth on the entire planet is being kept in offshore banks. One of the primary reasons for this is tax avoidance.

30. If a deal is not reached and the “fiscal cliff” is not avoided, the average American taxpayer can expect to pay about $3,500 more in taxes next year.

Too many taxes, too many tax evaders, too little benefit from government services. No matter how much Obama taxes the rich, it will be a drop in the bucket relative to our annual deficit spending and our overwhelming national debt.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICIANS THAT OPERATE IT SPEND AND WASTE TOO MUCH OF TAXPAYER WEALTH. We have a government out of control problem, not an under taxation problem. We have pointed out in the past, that even if you taxed millionaire earners in this country at 100%, you would not come close to eliminating Obama’s annual deficit spending never mind making a dent in the national debt.

Why? Because according to recent IRS data, there are only about 239,000 Americans earning over a million dollars a year. They comprise only about .14% of all income tax filers in the country.

We have pointed out in the pass that even if the government confiscated and monetized the total wealth, not income, of the richest people in this country, you would not come close to funding one year’s worth of Federal government operations and less than 15% of the national debt. You cannot fix this country by raising taxes, only by drastically reducing spending.

And Friday we will show you how to do that. We have found a way, leveraging the work of some very smart Americans, to take $9 TRILLION out of our national debt over the next ten years with relatively little pain to most Americans. It is relatively easy to do since most of the analytical work has already been done. Just seems that our political class is not capable of understanding basic math and basic logic.

I leave you today with these parting, and oh so true words: “The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

Dozens of taxation processes, over 50% marginal tax rates, $16.3 TRILLION in crushing debt, billions of dollars wasted every day, divisive class warfare, tax freedom days that get longer and longer, gross tax evasions, all to fund a dsyfuncitonal government. "Soul crushing" sounds about right with President Obama the lead soul crusher.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Day 5: Seven Days Of Logic and Sanity That Prove Raising Taxes On Any American Is Just Plain Stupid

This is a fifth in a eight part series that proves conclusively that there is no need for any politician in Washington to raise the taxes on any American, rich or poor, given how poorly the Federal government currently mismanages and wastes the taxes already being paid. Thus, President Obama’s insistence that the higher earners in this country pay more in taxes is ludicrous.

If the President, the executive branch of government over which he is in charge, and Congress were actually doing their jobs, the savings from making government more efficient, less redundant, and less subject to the massive criminal fraud we see today would overwhelm whatever funding shortfalls there are today to cover basic government expenses and costs.

Another major reason for not raising taxes on any American, because government will end up wasting it anyway, is that taking disposable income out of the economy via more taxation results in less economic growth. Given the high level of taxation in this country and the low economic growth in the country since Obama took office, maybe this correlation (high taxation = low economic growth) is actually a causation relationship.

Ask yourself: from an economic perspective, would you rather have higher earning Americans spending their hard earned wealth throughout the country on movies, restaurants, new cars, vacations, etc., contributing to real and meaningful economic growth or give it to Washington bureaucracies that will waste it on foreign consulate buildings that are never used, narrowly focused silly science projects that have no meaning in the real world, allow criminal elements to steal it from government agencies, etc.?

The answer is pretty clear, based on the first posts in this series. The amount of additional taxation the President wants to collect from higher earning Americans is minuscule relative to the massive government spending and deficits he has established for the bloated Federal government. It will make hardly a dent in the annual budget of the Federal government and an even smaller dent in our $16.3 TRILLION national debt.

The government has a chronic overspending problem, not an under taxation problem. Obama needs to reduce spending dramatically, not raise taxes that drain disposable income out of a struggling economy for no reason. He could surely learn a good economic lesson from a past President who understood this simple economic concept quite well.

The following post is a brief history of what Harry S. Truman did after World War II. President Truman realized that downsizing government from the massive Federal bureaucracy that was established to fight the war effort was best for the economy and the American people. He downsized government and reduced taxes, which resulted in balanced budgets, strong economic growth and low unemployment.

President Obama has taken just the opposite approach: massive increases in government spending, massive annual deficits, and now he wants higher taxes. His economic polices have resulted in persistently high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, very low economic growth, and massive government inefficiencies, criminal fraud, and wasteful spending.

We know how wasteful government is, we documented it over the past four posts. Making government smaller and more efficient is a proven way to go for a better life for Americans. Truman already proved it, Obama is ignoring logic, sanity, and history by his insistence that any American give more of their wealth to voracious and ineffective government bureaucracy

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Why Obama's Economic Policies Are Dead Wrong - A Real life Example In Pictures

We have talked about the many economic failures, in both strategy and execution, of the Obama administration over the past few years. These failures have resulted in heated and divisive class warfare rhetoric, skyrocketing national debt, high unemployment and underemployment, and abominable failures of economic programs:

•Failed economic programs and projects - these include, but are not limited to, Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Caulkers, Cash For Appliances, bank and auto company bailouts, the $800 billion stimulus program, Solyndra, and a number of other failed alternative energy programs.

•Regarding the massive and failed economic stimulus package, this administration claimed that unless it was passed immediately, the unemployment rate in this country could get as high as 8%. The package was passed and employment soared about 25% higher than 8%.

•Divisive class warfare - Obama constantly harps on the need to tax the wealthy in this country even more, blaming them for the skyrocketing annual trillion dollar deficits this administration has incurred. However, we have easily proven that even if you tax these Americans' earnings at 100% or confiscate all of their assets, it will have very little impact on the economic conditions in this country, quite possibly making them even worse while dividing the country along economic lines.

•Under the Obama administration, the recovery in unemployment and under employment after the last recession has been among the most anemic in the economic history of the United States.

•In the wake of of failed economic programs, divisive class warfare, and stubbornly high unemployment, the Obama administration has proceeded to run up the national debt much faster and much more dramatically, with little in return, than any President in the history of the United States.

All very good reasons to conclude that this administration has no clue when it comes to economics. Which is a shame since if you look back in our history, you will find a classic example of how to manage and grow an economy out of a crisis mode with favorable results across all major economic indices.

The example comes from the 1940s, when Harry Truman was President, certainly a time of major crisis where the United States and the rest of the world were involved in World War II fighting. Economies and lives were turned upside down as the country went into a war footing for the first half of the decade and then needed to convert back to a peace time economy in the second half of the decade.

Consider the following graph (you can double click on this and the following graphs to get a larger, more detailed view):

 

This is a graph of the size of the Federal government's annual spending volumes in the 1940s and 1950s. As you see, spending had to ramp up in the early 1940s to accommodate the massive war spending the Federal government needed to do to defeat the Axis powers.

However, look what happens when the war ends in 1945 (after the vertical line). Very quickly, Federal government spending drops dramatically (about 60%) as the government terminates its war spending. I do not believe in the history of the country have we seen such a dramatic and speedy reduction in Federal government spending.

If Obama was President in 1945, I doubt this would happen. Today, he and his political supporters refuse to seriously consider reducing government spending, insinuating that it would push the economy back into a recession. They have this misconception that unnecessary and wasteful government spending is necessary to keep the economy going. [Note: recall that our extensive analysis in this blog's past posts has shown that at least $500 billion in Federal spending a year is lost to waste and criminal fraud in government operations such as Social Security, Medicare, etc.]

What happened to the economy in the late 1940s when the Federal government made such drastic reductions in government spending? According to Obama's economic strategy, that would have had catastrophic effects on the economy.

Let's first look at the unemployment rate (double click on the graph for a larger view):

Yes, at the same time that the Federal government dramatically reduced spending, the unemployment rate did kick up a bit. This would seem to add some credence to Obama's theory that government spending needs to stay high and wasteful to keep the economy strong and growing.

In fact, there were some leading economists of the time that urged Truman to keep the war factories humming via government spending, making munitions and weapons for no purpose, just to create busy but useless work for people. This activity would create no viable economic progress since the output of the munitions and weapons factories would never be used, the war was over, but these economists, like Obama today, had this misconception that spending and wasting government money for no reason was good economic policy.

But consider a few facts from the above chart:

•Although unemployment did rise at the end of the war, it did not get above 4% for the immediate years after World War II and probably averaged 4-5% over the ten years after the end of the war, despite an initial, massive slashing of Federal spending.

•In 1945, the U.S. population was only about 139 million and at least 10% of that population was coming back into the civilian workforce after serving in the armed forces. Thus, the economy was able to absorb a very large number of new workers in the face of slashed government spending with an unemployment rate of less 5%, an extraordinary accomplishment.

Was this wonder of employment gains immediately after the war a result of massive government spending? Obama says we cannot reduce spending and have to run up horrendous deficits in order to keep the economy out of a recession. See what happened to deficits in the 1940s:

After the massive deficit spending during the early part of the 1940s that was needed to finance the war effort, Truman's Presidency not only slashed government spending, and the taxes that went with it, Truman also managed to very quickly go from a deficit riddled Federal government to a Federal government that was generally in balance, revenue about equal to spending, actually running a budget surplus in some years.

So far, Truman was able to succeed doing the exact opposite of what Obama is doing: dramatically reducing government spending and taxes, running a balanced Federal budget, and absorbing millions and millions of workers into the civilian part of the economy with minimal increase in unemployment.

One final view: did all of these efforts and results negatively impact the economy health of the country? Consider this last graph:

This GDP graph is over time, during and after World War II. As you can see, there is a little flatness in economic growth in 1946 as the nation adjusts back to a peace time economy but very shortly begins a strong growth pattern into the 1950s. Thus, dramatically slashing and reducing government spending did not negatively impact the growth and size of the nation's economy. In other words, we do not need a giant Federal government bureaucracy to have a healthy and growing economy.

So let's review:

1.Truman slashed taxes and government spending after the war ended, Obama wants to continue to raise taxes and government spending.

2.Truman ran a balanced Federal government budget after the war ended, with some budget surplus years, Obama runs massive Federal government deficits.

3.Truman's economic policies absorbed well over ten million workers into the economy that was much smaller in a nation with far fewer people, Obama's economic policies have resulted in long term unemployment and under employment for well over twenty million workers.

4.Truman's economic policies resulted in strong overall national economic growth, Obama's economic polices have resulted in weak overall economic growth.

5.And most importantly, Truman's economic polices severely reduced the role of government in our lives and economic well being, Obama's policies have dramatically increased the Federal government's involvement in our lives and economic well being, resulting in lost freedom and liberty.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and his supporters have not looked at this simple pictorial representation of a real life economic success story. It continues to cling to the false hope and faulty economic assumption that government has to be the center of economic activity and growth in this country, an assumption that is becoming increasingly viewed as wrong when you consider our anemic economic growth, failed economic polices of this administration, and long term chronic unemployment.

An old saying goes as follows: "When you are in a hole, stop digging." Obama needs to stop digging with his failed economic policies, programs, and strategies and borrow a ladder from Truman to get us out of our ever widening, ever deepening economic hole. Just look at the pictures.

On final note: as an FYI, all of the underlying data that went into the above graphs comes from official U.S. government sources. At no point were Republican Party, Tea Party, Fox News, or any other data sources used.

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We keep coming back to the same conclusion: we need to execute Step 1 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that would reduce government spending across the board by 10% a year for five years. This would get us to a balanced budget, force out redundant and stupid spending expenses, reduce criminal ripoffs of government programs, increase economic freedom and personal freedom by allowing Americans to retain more of their wealth, and get government focused on a much smaller set of priorities.

Government today is unfocused on a lot of things, doing none of them well, efficiently or to completion. Step 1 would force them to do far fewer things which may allow the political class to finally accomplish something worthwhile. Truman understood economics and his polices of smaller government, reduced taxes, and more freedom allowed the post World War II America to thrive. It is a simple economic lesson that Obama should consider before he raises taxes and expands a failing government bureaucracy even more.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Day 4: Seven Days Of Logic And Sanity That Prove Raising Taxes On Any American Is Just Plain Stupid

This is the fourth in a series of eight posts where we conclusively prove that no American, rich or poor, should pay another cent in taxes to the Federal government, given how poorly they manage the tax money we send to them already. On the eighth day of this series we will review a post we did earlier this year where we proved that one could reduce our national debt by $9 TRILLION over the next ten years with minimal pain to most Americans and without raising taxes on anyone.

Given the ability to take trillions of dollars out of our debt, the “tax the rich” argument that Obama has put forth in these fiscal cliff negotiations is ludicrous. What is needed is a good "spring cleaning” of the Federal bureaucracy, where the President and Congress go through the Federal government budget item list, item by item, and throw out those entities, programs, and expenses that do not benefit a vast number of Americans.

Three steps from “Love My Country, Loath My Government” would be a good starting basis on how to execute this spring cleaning:

1. Step 1 would reduce Federal spending by 10% a year for five years in order to finally get the Federal government to a balanced budget. By stripping out excess budget dollars from EVERY Federal organization, only essential government services could be provided with the greatly reduced funding available.
2. Step 34 would remove politicians from their Congressional committee posts for dereliction of duty, specifically for wasting taxpayer money on silly programs and projects.
3. Step 44 would eliminate any Federal program or expense that did not serve a high proportion of citizens from at least five states. No more funding bike trails in Michigan or farmers' markets in Kentucky (actual historical uses of federal funds). If Michigan needs a bike trail, let Michigan’s citizens fund its construction. If Kentucky needs a new farmers market, let the good folks in Kentucky fund it.

When the Statue Of Liberty needed funding for its restoration several decades ago, no Federal taxpayer money was used, it was all done from private donations. That should be our guideline going forward: a future project or program would only get Federal funding if it was more important to America than the Statue of Liberty. Such a criteria would certainly rule out Federal funding of bike trails and farmers’ markets.

Today we will present two disgusting examples of misspent taxpayer money. The first example is the most popular post we ever did in this blog. It discusses the wasting of $310 million of Defense Department funding that was used to build two brand new Navy ships and how once they were almost complete, and $300 million spent, the Navy decided to spend another $10 million to turn them into scrap metal before they were ever used. You cannot make this stuff up.

The second example cost the American taxpayer $80 million for nothing in return. It relates how the State Department built an $80 million consulate building and THEN decided that it was not defensible from a terrorist attack. The very sad part of this story is that the State Department ignored its own guidelines for constructing buildings on foreign soil. If they had followed their own guidelines, $80 million would have been saved because construction never would have happened in the first place. Disgraceful

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Friday, July 22, 2011

U.S. Navy Ships For Sale! Cheap, Never Used, Act Now

Just when you think that you have identified the latest government waste of taxpayer money, some big new wastes jump into your face. Consider some recent news reports that reported on how the U.S. government was scrapping two of its Navy ships even though they had never seen one day of service. Details of the waste include:

•Two large Navy ships, that have never been used, are headed for the scrap yard even though they are almost completely finished and ready for duty.

•Work began on the USNS Benjamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Company and were intended to carry fuel to the Navy's ships around the world.

•When the company defaulted on their Navy contract in 1989, the 600 foot ships were sent to Florida for completion. At the length of two football fields, these were not insignificant ships.

•The ships were eventually moved to the James River Navy yard and have sat there at 95% and 84% complete the past 18 years.

•A British company considered buying the ships and completing their build out for sale to a NATO country.

•However, since the ships are single hulled and double hulls are required for today's fuel carriers, the British company decided not to complete the construction and instead, settled on a $10 million contract and taxpayer expense to scrap the ships altogether.

•This week the ships are being towed to Texas to be cut up for scrap iron and scrap steel for recycling.

Thus, after spending $300 million to begin building the ships, almost finishing their construction, getting absolutely no use out of them, and paying to tow the ships from port to port, the taxpayers will get hit with one last insult and be charged $10 million to destroy the never used ships.

Where to start on this insanity:

1.Who is responsible for ordering the construction of these ships but never getting any use out of them? In the private market, if a business person was to incur that big of a screw up they would be out of a job.

2.Was there nowhere in the world that these ships could have been sold in order for taxpayers to get some money back rather than incurring another $10 million cost to have them destroyed? Even though the could not be used to haul fuel, was there no company in the world who would not want a sturdy Navy ship to ship other goods in its hold that was not fuel related?

There must be a Chinese shipping company who could use a new ship or two, especially since China's exports in the first half of 2011 was a record level of $874 billion, 20% higher than in 2010 (The Week, July 22, 2011). Thus, not only should the people responsible for building $300 million worth of ships be fired, the people who could not get anything in return by selling the ships should also be fired.

3.This is a classic example of Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 34 would remove politicians from any Congressional committee that does not do its committee job to at least to minimum standards. Whatever Congressional committee or subcommittee members were responsible for flushing $310 million of taxpayer wealth down the drain need to be removed from their committee or subcommittee posts.

The article contains a quote from Joseph Keefe from www.maritimeprofessional.com who stated that the scrapping the ships will "close one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding history and for that matter, Federal fiduciary folly." In other words, what a waste of taxpayer money. Very well said, Mr. Keefe.

Another scary aspect of this story is the thought that this may not be an isolated incident. What other $300 million wastes are hanging around the Pentagon closets? With Pentagon resources deployed in three war zones, dozens of foreign countries, and probably most of the fifty states, I find it hard to believe that this is the only wasted money in the Pentagon budget. Eliminating this type of despicable behavior would reduce the Pentagon budget without further endangering the defense of the United States.

While we are on the topic of waste, let's move out of the Defense Department domain and move to another area of gross government waste. According to an USA Today article, that was highlighted in the July 7, 2011 issue of The Week, the Federal government wastes about $17 billion of taxpayer wealth every year in the operation of its unemployment benefits program. Almost 12% of the program's budget is paid out fraudulently to Americans who are either collecting benefits they are not entitled to or are those people that have gotten a job but are still accepting unemployment benefits.

Compare these figures to the politically motivated ramblings of President Obama over the past few weeks. He has made a big deal about closing tax loopholes for oil companies and corporate jet users. Now, while I agree these loopholes should be closed, they are a pittance compared to the unemployment fraud.

Over ten years, the oil company loopholes would amount to about $20 billion and the corporate jets loophole would amount to about $3 billion, a total of $23 billion or so over 10 years. Ten years worth of this type of unemployment benefits waste comes out to $170 billion, which is almost eight times more than the political gamesmanship loopholes of Obama.

It never ends. The government cannot plan its Navy needs, resulting in wasting over $300 million on just two of its ships. The government cannot efficiently run a simple unemployment benefits program, wasting 12% of its budget and $17 billion a year. The politicians worry about the smaller, trivial wastes of taxpayer money while the bigger wastes go on and on every year.

The worst part of all, there is no apparent accountability. No one ever seems to be held responsible for all of the waste. Politicians continually get re-elected in the face of the waste. Government bureaucrats never seem to lose their jobs despite inefficiency and waste.

You wonder what kind of world those in DC live in where how well or bad you perform your job has no ramifications on your monetary reward and career paths. Its the kind of world I would like to live in where performance is unrelated to reality. But first, I need to see if any of those ships are still available, they are too good a deal to pass up.

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

U.S. Consulate For Sale! Never Used, Cheap, Act Now!

The all time most popular post ever written in this blog occurred on July, 2012 and was entitled, "U.S. Navy Ships For Sale! Never Used, Cheap, Act Now!" It reviewed the sorry history of two U.S. Navy ships, the USNS Benjamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford:

• These two ships were built using taxpayer money to the tune of about $300 million.
• They were almost complete when the Navy decided that they were no longer needed.
• Rather than find a foreign or domestic buyer for these perfectly good ships, either military or commercial, and get at least some money in return for the $300 million investment, the Navy decided to scrap them.
• The ships were then scrapped at an additional cost to the American taxpayer of about $10 million.

I think the purity of this taxpayer wealth waste is what makes this post the most popular. How much more disrespectful of the American taxpayer can you be than to spend $300 million, get no use for that $300 million investment, and then pay another $10 million to destroy the $300 million investment?

And what a great example of continued bad priority setting by the Washington political class. While Congress went nuts with hearings and indignation about the blatant waste which incurred when the GSA treated itself to a lush, expensive, $832,000 party in Las Vegas, I do not believe any Congressional investigations or hearings were done to investigate the military's waste of $310 million, an escapade that was 372 times more expensive.

But if you missed out on buying those Navy ships, we have another great deal for you, courtesy of a wasteful effort from your State Department. According to an Associated Press article from May 6, 2012:

• The United States is considering abandoning a consulate it was building in the northern part of Afghanistan because the building is now considered too dangerous to occupy.
• $80 million of American taxpayer money has already been spent on the construction of the consulate.
• The construction was being done to a former hotel "despite glaring security deficiencies."
• These deficiencies included shoddy construction which was overlooked during construction.
• Apparently, waivers were granted to go around strict State Department building rules in a rush to open the consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif as a sign of U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. i.e. they took an $80 million short cut with taxpayer money.
• The article described the various security problems including a susceptibility to car bombs, the sharing of a perimeter wall with local shopkeepers, being surrounded by tall buildings that could be used for an attack, the short distance between the compound's buildings and other buildings, the outer wall was not up to U.S. standards, and in the event of an emergency, there wasn't even enough space to land a single helicopter, so one would have to land on a nearby street.
• Besides the actual building location and security, the article goes on to say: "Neighborhood security also was in question. The compound was near a large mosque that is often the center of large protests in the city, and a nearby truck stop and pickup spot for day laborers provided easy cover for surveillance or attack."

In other words, somebody really screwed up when they gave the go ahead and the associated waivers to proceed building an $80 million complex that is likely never to be used.

Or said in official administration language: "Consequently, establishing a diplomatic presence at the current location is no longer believed to be tenable and the search for an alternative site has been initiated."

Another $80 million of taxpayer wealth down the drain for absolutely no benefit or return on investment. And apparently no Congressional indignation or investigation even though this fiasco is 96 times more expensive and wasteful than the GSA Las Vegas conference, an expense that made everyone's headlines and started Congressional investigations.

Three steps need to be taken relative to this disaster:

1. Those involved in this waste of taxpayer money, those that picked the location without doing their security due diligence, those that signed off on the waivers that made a bad security situation worse, and those that supervised those that made these bad decisions need to be fired. In the private sector, if someone wasted $80 million like this, you can be sure they would be fired. If GSA people got fired for wasting $832,000, State Department people need to be fired for wasting $80 million.
2. The entire process that led to this disaster needs to reviewed and changed so that it never happens again. One would have thought that after two hundred years, the Federal government would know how to do a simple thing like selecting a secure consulate location. Apparently they do not, so a complete, professional review of this decision process needs to be put in place.
3. Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" needs to be put in place. Step 34 would remove Congressional members from their committee posts for massive screw ups such as the Navy fiasco described above and this embassy waste. Maybe if Congressional members knew that their committee posts were at stake, their performance and overview of their committees' responsibilities might be a little more diligent and effective.

These types of incidents are interesting, and depressing, when it comes to certain types of economists that are favored by Obama and Democrats. These Keynesian economists insist that the Federal government cannot afford to cut government spending at all since it would hurt the so-called economic recovery, which has been next to non-existent. They somehow believe that ANY spending by the Federal government leads directly to increased economic activity.

So my questions to them would involve the following:

• How does taking $300 million out of the economy via taxes and spending that $300 million on Navy ships that are never used lead to economic growth? There are no usable assets available for continued economic growth after the ships dismantling is complete. That $300 million could have been used to build factories and businesses that would lead to continued economic growth into the future by the private market. Now all the country has is a pile of used scrap steel for its $300 million expenditure.
• How does the wasteful government spending of $80 million on a consulate half way around the world, that will never be used, contribute to domestic economic growth?
• How does losing $600 billion a year on waste, criminal fraud, and inefficiencies in the Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other government programs improve the economy? If the Federal government and political class were doing their job, this $600 billion in waste could be returned to taxpayers for their use in the economy, a use that would be more efficient, more beneficial to the economy, and restore some degree freedom to the nation's citizens.

These types of economists seem to think that government can spend citizens' wealth more efficiently than the citizens can. Given the above examples of massive waste, the failed Cash For Clunkers program, the failed $830 billion stimulus program, and other failed Obama administration Keynesian economic programs:

• Why do they still claim that politicians know how to efficiently and effectively spend our wealth?
• How can they possibly claim that spending $80 million in Afghanistan is a Federal government expense that should not be cut?
• How can they possibly claim that building and dismantling ships before they are used is a Federal government expense that cannot be cut?
• How can they possibly claim that losing Medicare funds to criminal fraud by the Armenian mob is a Federal government expense that cannot be cut (see the following post for the Armenian reference: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/10/speak-out-against-madness-of-irritating.html)?

Makes no sense to me. And it should not make any sense to any rational person, given this administration's economic approach that has resulted in massive national debt levels, stubbornly high unemployment, record food stamp rolls, expensive bailouts, and a string of failed economic programs on everything from mortgages to appliances.

But do not let this political insanity get in your way of a great investment. I doubt that those Navy ships are still available but if you move quickly, I bet you could get a sweet deal on this unused $80 million consulate, probably for pennies on the dollar. It is convenient to the local marketplace, is within walking distance to a main place of worship, and is out in the country, away from the hustle bustle. Just watch out for the Taliban, they can get a little agitated, in a terrorist sort of way.

[Note: Please visit the following post to see what actually happened once upon a time when the Federal government dramatically cut its spending, calling every Keynesian economic theory into doubt:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-really-happens-when-you-cut.html]
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$380 million spent with no return. That is why no American should ever pay another penny in taxes when such waste and idiocy pervades our Washington political class and Federal government.
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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w