Archive for the ‘Fair Tax’ Category

It’s been said,

“Opinions are like Grass Holes”.

Everybody’s got one.  Well sort of.

 Watch this video to determine if you’re paying your slice of the “Fair Share”

December 2, 2011

Weekly local legislator roll call report for the Romeo Area Tea Party

Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting

Mackinac Center

House Bill 4163, Require school bullying policies: Passed 35 to 2 in the Senate
To require schools to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation, or bullying, but not one enumerating specific characteristics, including gender, race and sexual orientation. The bill does not include an exemption previously added by the Senate to its own bullying bill, Senate Bill 137, for “a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” That bill will be allowed to die in the House.

Senate Bill 484, Authorize state borrowing to pay off unemployment debt to feds: Passed 34 to 2 in the Senate
To authorize a state unemployment “obligation assessment” imposed on all employers to service the debt incurred through state borrowing to pay off some $3.2 billion owed to the federal government for unemployment benefits paid to residents over the past several years. Senate Bill 483 authorizes the borrowing (“bond sales”).

Senate Bill 806, Revise unemployment insurance social welfare program: Passed 23 to 11 in the Senate
To revise various elements of the state unemployment insurance social welfare system. This is part of the package authorizing state borrowing to pay off some $3.2 billion in unemployment system debt, owed because benefit payments exceeded payroll tax revenues. The bill would revise the formulas for assessing these payroll taxes on employers; require beneficiaries to accept alternative work at lower pay than currently required; increase required job-search disclosures and reporting by beneficiaries; clarify factors making an employee ineligible for unemployment benefits (like stealing or absenteeism); and more. It would also make employees in a “work sharing” program eligible for unemployment benefits.

House Bill 5125, Authorize elimination of road commissions: Passed 66 to 40 in the House
To establish that a county road commission can be eliminated by a county board if its creation was originally authorized by the county board, and eliminated by a vote of the people if that’s how it was originally authorized. If either happens, the county board would assume the duty of managing the county’s road system.

Senate Bill 567, Create another corporate subsidy program: Passed 95 to 11 in the House
To authorize cash subsidies of up to $10 million for firms selected by political appointees on the board of the state government’s “Michigan Strategic Fund,” who would have broad discretion to hand out these cash subsidies and subsidized loans to particular firms. This “Michigan Community Revitalization Program” would essentially replace subsidies provided through the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA), and also ones handed out under “brownfields” statutes, which were “open-ended,” whereas this program will hand out around $100 million annually (that’s the amount appropriated this year).

SOURCE: MichiganVotes.org, a free, non-partisan website created by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, providing concise, non-partisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill and vote in the Michigan House and Senate. Please visit http://www.MichiganVotes.org.

“It’s deja vu all over again”

‘Super committee’ on brink of fresh deadlock over deficit

“It’s deja vu all over again”

‘Super committee’ on brink of fresh deadlock over deficit

“It’s deja vu all over again”

‘Super committee’ on brink of fresh deadlock over deficit

The first Television I owned was a hand-me-down from my parents. It got all the local channels, when I stood on one foot and held the antenna in my left hand.

My first apartment had cable connections that I used for a much better reception. Eventually, the television blew and I saved my pennies for a whole month to buy a new Television with a remote control. Shortly after I got married the family started to grow, so we bought a bigger model we could all watch together.

Most of the neighbors paid extra for Showtime and HBO, but we just couldn’t afford it. Later on we added the Disney channel with all those “must see” TV shows my kids wanted to watch. Naturally, we had to increase the monthly cable budget and bought a new television for the living room. The kids use the old TV in the family room.

As the children grew older, our cable service really hit its stride, offering sports channels 24/7. Eventually, the “Big Games” were too important to miss, so we purchased our first Plasma TV. The store offered a “six months, same as cash” program we couldn’t afford to pass up.

Unexpectedly, one of the kids needed braces before the six months was up. Naturally, we paid most of the orthodontist bill and put the balance on our credit card. Though the balance due on our Plasma TV wasn’t overwhelming, we got hit by the big interest fee for missing the six month payoff deadline.

Lucky for us, the housing market started to heat up and our mortgage guy told us that we had a lot of equity in our home. He even offered to refinance the mortgage at his cost. We decided to take out some of that equity and pay off those credit cards and the Plasma TV. Once the credit cards were paid off, our Credit Score was really awesome. We could afford to buy just about anything we wanted.

Commercials on the Plasma TV told us a new car dealer in town was offering one of those 0% interest rates for five years. It was another deal we just couldn’t pass up.

The Plasma TV was really starting to pay off, but it was so big that the reception was a little fuzzy. A buddy of mine told me the solution for the Plasma TV was easy, we just need to add the High Definition feature to our cable bill.

Somehow with all of this great credit, our monthly expenses began to eat up our entire monthly income. But, once again we realized the housing market was really strong, so we refinanced our home at a lower rate, taking out some more equity to pay down the credit cards and reduce our monthly payments. We even came away from the closing with enough cash to take a Caribbean vacation. We did charge some miscellaneous trip expenses to our credit cards, but there was plenty of room to spare.

Back home, the Plasma TV was still really cool. Now the kids wanted one of their own for the latest video games. A local furniture store was giving away free 50-inch models, with the purchase of furniture. My wife told me our old living room was way overdue for an upgrade, so we took advantage of the store’s “1-year same as cash promotion”. Now everybody was happy!

Our Plan was to refinance the house again, just before the 1-year was up on the furniture promotion. That time we closed with enough cash to pay off all the furniture and the credit cards.

Right about then, there was a big news story that I saw on the big Plasma TV.  Some “jerks” on Wall Street were doing really stupid stuff with Mortgages and something called “Default Swaps” or “Derivatives”. Whatever they did really screwed up the whole housing market and the value of our home dropped almost overnight. We were hoping to sell our home for some big bucks and move into a newer model. Now we owed more on our Mortgage, than our house could be sold for.

At this point, there was no way we could make all our monthly payments, because after the Wall Street guys messed everything up, my wife lost her job when the economy tanked.

Then one day I’m flipping channels on the big Plasma TV and I catch a story about how the government passed something called TARP. Those bastards in Washington gave all their buddies on Wall Street a bailout! I don’t know why us taxpayers had to bail out those Wall Street thugs. Now the whole nation is paying for their mistakes. The story was on the news almost every night for weeks.

I think the public uprising from the TARP bailout was really strong. After about six months Congress passed some relief for the little guy, here on Main Street. Congress finally passed a stimulus package to help homeowners like me get a “Loan Modification”. Now, because my home is worth less than I owe on it, all I have to do is quit making the payments for six months and they’ll force the banks to modify my mortgage. They told me my new monthly payment will be cut in half! Boy that will really screw over the banks! There’s no way I was going to pay back the old mortgage, just because some guys made a mistake on Wall Street.

Now something else is going on in Washington D.C. Just last night, on my big Plasma TV, there was another news story about Congress trying to fix the “Debt Ceiling”. I don’t know what the heck a “Debt Ceiling” is, but they better not raise my taxes just to fix it. I’m tired of paying for everyone else’s screw ups.

If they raise my taxes again,

I might just go out and register to vote.

For our generation “Return of the Jedi” was more than a silly movie; it was a clarion call, a summons, to those who believe in freedom, liberty and human dignity against the constant onslaught of the dark forces. These past few weeks we have started to see a new ripple in the pond that we can only hope becomes a giant wave as we move into 2012. Specifically, it is a ripple of energy from those on the forefront of job creation, free markets and sound economic policy that says “We’re not going to take this anymore, we’ve been the punching bags for too long and now we are ready to take up the fight.” It comes not only from business leaders, but from the grass roots and from actors across the political spectrum. Let’s take a look at just a few of the stories from this past week:

Boeing Corporation, our country’s only manufacturer of large aircraft, was ambushed by the Obama Administration’s National Labor Relations Board which took the decision that Boeing does not have the right to open a new manufacturing facility in South Carolina because it’s a Right to Work state (meaning that an individual worker cannot be forced to join a union).This is ostensibly a big negative, bit what was enormously encouraging was that the CEO of Boeing, Jim McErney, wasted no time in confronting the Administration in the pages of The Wall Street Journal:

(The NLRB) claims we improperly transferred existing work, and that our decision reflected “animus” and constituted “retaliation” against union-represented employees in Washington state. Its remedy: Reverse course, Boeing, and build the assembly line where we tell you to build it.

The NLRB is wrong and has far overreached its authority. Its action is a fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America’s competitiveness since it became the world’s largest economy nearly 140 years ago. We’ve made a rational, legal business decision about the allocation of our capital and the placement of new work within the U.S. We’re confident the federal courts will reject the claim, but only after a significant and unnecessary expense to taxpayers.

More worrisome, though, are the potential implications of such brazen regulatory activism on the U.S. manufacturing base and long-term job creation. The NLRB’s overreach could accelerate the overseas flight of good, middle-class American jobs.

In Obama’s first two years how many times did you hear a public pushback from the business community? Pretty rare, right? Let’s hope this is just the first shot in a long battle.

Oil executives came under fire again this week as well for their corporate tax carve out. The obvious answer here is to simply lower the corporate tax rate significantly or get rid of it entirely. Congress, never one to take the obvious path, would rather keep a high tax rate and then pass carveouts for every industry from farming to mining to general manufacturing to oil and gas exploration. Then when the industry of the day makes a profit they can be pulled before the high court of Congress and belittled. The oil executives fought back this time, as did Senator Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana:

This will not reduce gasoline prices. So why are we doing it? Will it create jobs? No. It will actually hurt job production in the United States,” Landrieu said. “Why don’t you help us produce more, because we can do it, but we get shut down by bureaucracy, moratoriums, permatorium, rules, regulations, EPA, refuges. We can’t even get free to produce the energy that we can produce for this country

Rick Snyder’s business tax passed the State House and Senate this week, though the Senate was as narrow as it gets. Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves that the state that twice elected Granholm has now come full circle and decided to end the idiotic hand outs to the film industries and embrace general business tax cuts and, more importantly, simplification. A few more years of this and we might just get to the place where we start to realize in Michigan that it is businesses, started by entrepreneurs willing to take risks, that pays for everything else – EVERYTHING ELSE!

Lansing voters said no to a four millage increase in their property taxes. Yes, the very home of America’s angriest mayor, Virge Bernero, learned about the tax millage vote language and said no thanks. Read this article and learn about how to fight tax increases.

Classified under “It must be in the water,” Massachusetts’ Democrats have now started to move legislation that would prevent public sector unions from negotiating for health care benefits. Yes, not Wisconsin but Massachusetts. We are not making this up.

California Lifeguards are the latest casualty of the state and local government bankruptcy  quagmire that we find ourselves in. It was just a matter of time before it came out that many of them make over $200,000 a year and will enjoy million dollar pensions. You can just imagine the Dems lining up to defend the baywatch boys!

All in all, the past week, in fact the past few months, have been good ones. We have focused the nation’s attention on debt, taxes and the need for a growing economy. Call it the Return of the Jedi, in the person of the tea party patriots!

Does that seem like a strange question? After all, in the current Michigan budget debate we hear often that Governor Snyder wants to give corporations a huge tax break on the back of middle class citizens with pensions.  And there is no doubt that with the elimination of the Michigan Business Tax many corporations will pay less in taxes.

But the question is still germane, and very important to understand. The point is that a corporation, regardless of the fact that it writes a check from its account once a year to pay the Michigan Business Tax, does not actually pay taxes. Consider the following from Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of economics at Princeton University:

… corporations cannot possibly pay the corporate income tax, because they are not human beings. Instead, that tax always is fully passed to one or all of three groups of human beings: to customers through higher prices, to shareholders through lower returns on capital, or to employees through lower take-home pay. Under fierce global competition, the potential of shifting corporate taxes to customers often is limited. Similarly, in a global capital market, the corporate tax cannot easily be shifted to capital owners who have the option of taking their capital elsewhere. Economists therefore suspect that the bulk of the corporate income tax is shifted back to the least global mobile target, the employees.

Take the example of Widgets, Inc. This a corporation formed though investments by Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa and a 2nd mortgage on your house. You buy raw materials from vendors, and you and your employee make widgets. You hire a guy to sell and he pounds the pavement until you have some customers. Since your new ‘mouse trap’ take the world by storm, you start to make some profits. Being a wise old business person you realize that at the end of the year you are going to have to make a payment to the government on your profits. What should you do?

You could raise prices on your mouse trap, but the competition is already hard on your heels. You could ask your vendors to lower the price of raw materials, but you scouted the market and have the best deal out there already. Your relatives expect some payback on their investment, and the last thing you want to do is explain to your own family that you have lost the house because the business is too successful. Your sales person keeps bringing in more orders and you need to buy more machines to build more mouse traps, and purchase more raw materials. The only way to do it all and keep your new company growing is to hold down wages. Your employees, by not receiving a share of the company’s success, ultimately pay the corporate income tax. This explains why business owners hand out Christmas hams – they are thanking you for paying the Michigan Business Tax!

But seriously, it should be obvious that a corporation is simply a legal entity through which the business transactions of the company flow. A corporation can no more pay taxes than a widget machine, a desk, an adding machine can pay taxes. Yet these things comprise the tangible assets of the company.

The answer then to our original question is that you cannot give a corporation a tax break because you cannot collect taxes from a corporation.You can however give the employees of a corporation a tax break. And it’s about time that we do.

Previously, Harry Reid and Obama plotted a government shutdown

So what’s the down side?

Does anybody take Pelosi seriously anymore?

Not according to the San Francisco Chronicle, as the House voted 335-91 to pass a stop gap spending bill, with the Senate expected to put the bill on Obama’s desk later today (March 2nd).

Conventional wisdom in Washington DC is that the “1995 government shutdown” prompted by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s hardball tactics was a political fiasco for congressional Republicans. And today conventional wisdom is split between a camp that thinks conservatives have “learned the lesson” of this fight and won’t do it again, and those who think that Tea-fueled House backbenchers will force a shutdown.

TEA Party Members say this ain’t 1995!

Freshman GOP Stand Firm

“Wait a second,” said Gingrich. “This is the standard, elite, inside-the-Beltway worldview. Tell me in what way we didn’t win. After that, we got to a balanced budget. And what happened to the Republican majority?” The answer, of course, is that Republicans held the majority in 1996, while President Bill Clinton was reelected.

House Republicans last weekend passed a bill to fund the government for the seven months of the fiscal year from the start of March to the end of September with cuts of $61 billion from current spending levels.
The response from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday was a proposal to continue spending for one month at current levels while negotiations continue. But under the Reid plan, there would be only six months left in the year for cuts and the $61 billion proposed by Republicans would automatically shrink to $52.3 billion.

Every week that current spending rates continue means another $2.2 billion less that would be cut under the Republicans’ plan.

Gingrich versus Boehner; who’s got the support of the people?

Gingrich was personally as well as professionally unpopular.

Never in more than a dozen ABC/Post polls from 1995 to 1998 did Gingrich’s approval rating exceed his disapproval. He never saw better than 41 percent approval (Nancy Pelosi’s been 13 points higher), while going as high as 65 percent disapproval during the unpopular government shutdown in a fall 1995 budget battle with Bill Clinton.
Sixty-four percent opposed Gingrich’s re-election as speaker in January 1997. And when he announced in November 1998 that he was stepping down, 70 percent approved.

He was broadly seen as divisive: In 1998 data, 63 percent said he’d tried harder to work against the Democrats in Congress than to work with them. Ninety percent said his successor should try harder to be more cooperative with the then-opposition party. And 82 percent opposed his running for president in 2000.

A new poll out in January shows Rep. John Boehner’s image on the rise among Americans.

The  Jan. 14-16 USA Today/Gallup poll shows the West Chester Republican’s favorability rating at 42 percent – up 15 points from before the mid-term elections and his ascension to House Speaker.

The poll also found that one in three Americans are still unfamiliar with Boehner.  Notes Gallup: Americans have once again reacted warmly to a new speaker of the House, with Boehner getting a bump in his favorable ratings and the public now viewing him much more positively than negatively. History suggests the good feelings toward Boehner may not last, as both (Nancy) Pelosi and (Newt) Gingrich saw their ratings get worse within months of becoming speaker.

Government Shut Down, What you need to know.

On his blog FiveThirtyEight published at The New York Times, Nate Silver has developed a chart to visualize the field of potential Republican presidential candidates, and how they compare on two main factors.

Nate explains his chart in more detail at his blog, but here is the shorthand version.

Horizontal axis

Moderate vs. Conservative (on right, naturally)

Vertical axis

Insider vs. Outsider (DOWN to earth, naturally)

Color

 ”… the color of each circle reflects the region the candidate is from: blue for the Northeast, red for the South, green for the Midwest, and yellow for the West.”

Size:  ”… the area of each candidate’s circle is proportional to their perceived likelihood of winning the nomination, according to the Intrade betting market.”

Herman Cain

Many of these potential candidates were speakers this year at CPAC- Conservative Political Action Conference.  One speaker you might not have seen/heard before is Herman Cain.  Click below to watch.

Here are links to some other “Possibles” that were speakers at CPAC this year.

Clicking on a link will take you to the CPAC website. You must register to view videos - it’s free.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN)  

Gov. Haley Barbour (MS)

Ambassador John Bolton 

Senator Jim DeMint (SC)

The Hon. Newt Gingrich

Hon. Gary Johnson

Rep. Ron Paul (TX)

Governor Tim Pawlenty (MN)

Hon. Mitt Romney

Hon. Rick Santorum

Sen. John Thune (SD)

Donald Trump

Gov. Snyder’s corporate tax plan includes phase out of state tax credits

Snyder’s tax plan hits big firms hardest

At the same time, Snyder is expected to significantly cut back targeted tax credits such as those received by the film industry and paid to industry by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority.

Business owners, many legislators and tax opponents roundly applauded Gov. Rick Snyder’s State of the State pledge to kill the Michigan Business Tax, but another disaster looms if any time lapses before Plan B is in place.

“What you don’t want to do is eliminate the tax, then figure out how you’re going to replace it. That would be a bad strategy,” Business Leaders for Michigan President Doug Rothwell told editors of The Press on Thursday.

Please Click the Text and Photo above to read the source articles of this post.

Taxed Enough Already

TEA Party members get a mixed bag of wins/losses from Congress, as it sends the Tax Cut Bill to Obama’s desk for signing on Friday, December 17th.  Though the bill contains a two year extension of “The Bush Tax Cuts”, Obama negotiated additional spending of $858 billion within the legislation.  Click the image above to read more.

In a Far More Aggressive Move to Limit Government,

How Omnibus was Defeated GOP Kills Omnibus Omnibus: The Ugly Truth Omnibus Funds Abortions?

U.S. Senate blocks DREAM Act,

passes repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

In a Saturday session a week before Christmas, the U.S. Senate voted failed to overcome a procedural vote to move the DREAM Act forward.

The Senate shot down the DREAM Act motion on a 55-41 vote.  The U.S. Senate did invoke cloture for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the law which prohibits openly gay or lesbian citizens from serving in the U.S. military.  The legislation went on to pass the full Senate late on Saturday afternoon.

U.S. Senate blocks DREAM Act “Dream Act” Bill Blocked

U.S. Senate repeals ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal celebrated in S.F.

Who Voted for What?

Click the our U.S. Senate image to begin your research