Wildman’s Hangout

Posted by Ben on August 20, 2010 ·

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

Conservatives often see the government as an Orwellian apparatus hungrily devouring our God-given rights. Liberals in power (three of the scariest words ever written) often given them ample reason to think so. But just as often, the government is less a sleek tiger than a bloated pig gorging on everything available, reveling in filth, and unintentionally destroying everything it touches in the process. Republican Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain have revealed how Obama’s stimulus bill is at once dangerous and hapless, disconcerting and idiotic.

Yesterday, I reported that $500,000 of the  bill went toward implanting microchips in recycling bins in Dayton, Ohio, to monitor residents’ trash. The senators’ “Summertime Blues” report lists 100 boondoggles underwritten by the taxpayers as part of the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). While some have unnerving undertones, most of the waste uncovered in the 74-page synopsis just shows what a broken and corrupt place Washington is.

Among the more amusing findings, the report documents how our beloved leaders gave:

• $298,543 to the Southwest Research Institute in Texas to study “atmospheric forecasting of weather and climate on other plants.” Yes, they will tell you the weather on Mars. The scientists insisted this “has great appeal.” We’re waiting with bated breath and our wallets open.
• $712,883 for Northwestern University reserchers to build a robotic comedian.  (Has Janeane Garofalo retired?)
• $89,298 to Boynton, Oklahoma, to build a sidewalk that leads to a ditch.
• $144,541 to provide cocaine for Monkeys. Scientists at Wake Forest University will study the coked-up primates to research the “Effect of Cocaine Self-Administration on Metabotropic Glutamate Systems.”
• $200,000 to Toledo, Ohio, to maintain a freighter ship it keeps on display that averages 30 visitors a day (in that tourist paradise of Toledo).
• $253,123 for museum with 44 visitors a year. The North Carolina State Insect Museum will use the money to promote itself and end its Maytag repairman-like life. The first step is a “Insect of the Week” feature on its website, followed by a line of baseball cards with “native and fascinating insects.” Good luck with that, you social butterflies.
• $1 million a year for 19 Los Angeles bus stations to purchase artwork to “enhance the customer experience.”
• $1 million for buy iPod touches for 1,600 high school students in Salt Lake City. They get to keep the devices if they graduate with their class.
• $6 million to build a boutique hotel in Buffalo, New York, “as high-end as they come.” But the local conventions bureau’s former president said they need no more hotel rooms.
• And perhaps most unforgivably — $25,000 for the International Accordion Festival in San Antonio, Texas.

Feeling fleeced yet? You will after you read the report.

Their booklet recounts page upon page of such grants. The beneficiaries’ attempts to explain  these pork projects “create jobs” is imaginative fiction, and their claims of having created, e.g., one-quarter of one job here, one-half of one job there, make one wonder how anyone could ever believe Keynesian economics again. The report makes clear, upon a careful reading, the bill destroyed as many jobs as it produced, even in projects that actually hired people. Heaven knows how many jobs this $0.84 trillion confiscation could have generated in the free market, or how much better the average taxpayer’s quality of life would have been if he had some of that money back in his pockets.

It’s funny about the Left; you have to laugh to keep from crying.

source:  http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/100-ways-obama-is-wasting-your-money/

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Now this really took some thinking…

The object of the game is to destroy American capitalism by having the government take over everything!

Want to play?  No??? Too bad, you’re already playing…  and just don’t know it.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-health-care-bill-is-great-for-american-taxpayers-if-you-like-being-punched-in-the-groin

Thanks to the health care “reform” bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Barack Obama, American taxpayers are about to be hit with the largest tax increase in the history of the United States.  According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation the health care bill will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by 2019.  But there are also heavy fines for those who refuse to buy the health insurance mandated by the bill.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the health care bill imposes approximately $69 billion in penalties for individuals and businesses who don’t meet mandates to purchase health insurance.  This will be the first time in the history of the United States that the federal government has ordered Americans citizens to buy a good or service.  But it is not just a small amount of money that the U.S. government is requiring all of us to spend.  In fact, the federal government will be mandating that ordinary Americans pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do in federal taxes.

Just think about how bizarre that is.

It is a total government takeover of the health care system, and it is an absolute windfall for the health insurance companies.

No wonder their stocks have been heading into the stratosphere.

Before we take a look at all the taxes the American people will soon be paying, we should consider how much our health insurance premiums are about to go up.

According to one analysis, a middle class family of four making $66,370 will initially be forced to pay $5,243 per year for health insurance under the new system.

That would be bad enough.  But once more of the provisions contained in the health care bill start kicking in that figure is going to go up significantly.

How significantly?

According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2016, the average family health care plan will cost $15,200 per year.

Can you afford to pay that?

Well, whether you like it or not, the U.S. government will now be forcing you to shell out cash for health insurance.

And we all get to be taxed like crazy at the same time.

Oh joy!

Let’s take a look at some of the taxes….

*Section 9001 of the health care bill contains an excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans.  In other words, if you have provided your family with the very best in health insurance coverage you get to be taxed extra.  This tax is particularly harsh.  It imposes a 40 percent tax rate on the portion of insurance premiums exceeding $8,500 a year for individuals and $23,000 a year for family plans.  In an attempt to hide this tax, Democrats have imposed it on the employers who provide these plans to their employees.

What do you think the odds are that employers will simply quit offering these really good health plans to their employees now?

Also, keep in mind the the levels at which this 40 percent tax kick in will be indexed to inflation.  Since inflation typically grows at a much slower rate than the cost of health care, an increasing number of employers will be confronted with this tax as the years go by.

*Section 9004 contains a very interesting provision.  Taxes on money in a health savings account not used for qualified medical expenses will increase from 10% to 20%.  For “Archer” medical savings accounts, taxes on money not used for qualified medical expenses will increase from 15% to 20%.

*Section 9008 of the health care bill imposes a $2.3 billion excise tax on the pharmaceutical industry.  This tax is distributed throughout the entire pharmaceutical industry and it is not based on the income of the individual firms.  Instead, the tax will solely be based on market share.  So even if a pharmaceutical company is losing hundreds of millions of dollars it will still have to pay this tax.

*Section 9009 of the health care bill imposes an “annual fee” on medical device manufacturers and importers.  Just like the tax imposed on the pharmaceutical industry, this tax on medical device manufacturers and importers will be based on market share and not on income.

*Section 9010 of the health care bill imposes an ”annual fee” on health insurance providers.  This harsh $6.7 billion tax would also be allocated based on market share.

Perhaps you don’t think that some of these taxes will impact you personally.

But just think about it for a moment.

Do you actually believe that the health insurance firms, pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers will not pass the cost of these taxes on to consumers?

The truth is that American taxpayers will end up paying for all of these taxes one way or another.

*Section 9015 of the health care bill imposes an extra 0.5% tax on wages over $200,000 for those who file a single return and on wages over $250,000 for those who file a joint return.

*Section 9017 of the health care bill imposes an excise tax on elective cosmetic medical procedures.  Any voluntary cosmetic procedures will now be subjected to a 5 percent tax.
So now all of those nose jobs and boob enhancements are about to get a whole lot more expensive.

But as bad as all of those taxes are, that is just the first wave.

The second wave is in the reconciliation act that the House has already passed and is now in the Senate.

We encourage all of you to read H.R. 4872 – it is really a frightening bill.

The following are just some of the new taxes contained in that bill….

*A 2.5% income tax (more like a fine) on anyone who does not purchase health care insurance.  This tax will be limited to an amount less than the average national health care insurance premium.

*A 1% tax increase on those making between $350,000 and $500,000.

*A 1.5% tax increase on those making between $500,000 and $1 million.

*A 5.4% tax increase on those making more than $1 million per year.

*For firms that do not provide health insurance for their employees, and yet do not qualify for exclusions, an 8% tax on wages will be applied.

Are you starting to get the picture?

When you add all of these taxes together, you get the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States.

That is going to make it really hard for the American people to try to live the American Dream.

In fact, these “reforms” are a whole lot more about money than they are about health care.

Under the new health care regime, the Internal Revenue Service will function as the government’s chief enforcer for health care reform.

Isn’t that lovely?

The U.S. government has taken over the entire health care system, and they are about to
make a gigantic financial mess of it.

What in the world has happened to the United States of America?

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-health-care-bill-is-great-for-american-taxpayers-if-you-like-being-punched-in-the-groin

By Tony Blankley
March 24, 2010

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats’ argument for the health care bill, claiming, “This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country.” Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the traditions that are American that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the “right” of all Americans to government-assured health care services. The congressional Democrats claim many other things that a majority of the country believes to be inconsistent with truth and reality.

So, considering the rhetorical onslaught that is about to be unleashed on the public, to paraphrase (and with the deepest apologies to) Winston Churchill on the occasion of the fall of France in June 1940:

What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic Party must very soon be trained on the electorate.

If they can stand up to the coming propaganda, America may be free, and the life of the wider free world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if the voters succumb to those seven months of blandishments and deceptions, then free America — including all that we have known and cared for — will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let the public therefore brace itself to its duties, and so concentrate its mind on the true facts, that if the American spirit of freedom and dignity last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was the American voters’ finest hour.”

As I said, apologies to Winston Churchill for borrowing and abusing his immortal words on the fall of France and the beginning of the Battle of Britain.

And yet, for us, now and here is where we must battle for our freedom. Not, pray God, with bullets, but with words and ideas.

This battle will not be fought in the skies over London, but on the Internet and airwaves over America. The target is not the homes and factories of the people, but the minds and judgments of the voters. But the power of a mind confused and misused is every bit as threatening to freedom as is the power of bombs and bullets.

The path to Sunday’s catastrophic vote was paved with cynical blandishments by the Democratic Party’s congressional leaders to their members. The votes were induced by the assurance that in the seven remaining months before the election, the true facts of their legislation, which led to overwhelming public opposition to the bill when passed — can be undone in the minds of the voters by remorselessly repeating misconceptions to the public.

The most mendacious, cruel and destructive proposition put forth by the Democratic congressional leadership — and soon by almost all its ranks and files — is, of course, the outlandish claim that the bill will reduce the deficit.

The uncontrolled growth of the annual deficits and total public debt is at the crux of the public’s slack-jawed horror of Washington policy these past 18 months. Washington is placing our grandchildren’s prosperity on a slow boat to China.

Everything that more than 200 years of American invention, investment, labor, suffering and triumph, war and victory has created is being sold off to the world’s lowest bidders in a matter of months.

So far, the public has not been fooled by the claim that a new entitlement for 30 million people is being created — and it will cost less.

But now the Democrats have the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) official accounting — and they plan to use it as a shield and a sword as they wade into the public debate.

Of course, every informed person understands why the CBO calculation is an honest measure of a dishonest bill. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan at the health care summit, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in last Sunday’s New York Times, and hundreds of commentators have all laid out the lamentable, indisputable and undisputed fact that the CBO methodology has been gamed by the congressional Democrats to turn what will be more than a trillion dollars in further public deficit and debt into a fantasy savings of $140 billion.

While Medicare is at about $30 trillion in unfunded liability by 2070, the bill preposterously claims it is going to cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars a decade. The quarter- to half-trillion dollars per 10 years that it will cost to pay Medicare doctors enough to keep them providing services has simply been put in another bill. The mendacities go on and on. They are not merely small, politically useful little deceptions. They are of a dimension that may destroy the republic.

The Democratic congressional leadership seems to have a stunningly insulting view of their potential voters’ intelligence. But on such a basis is the battle for the minds of the voters joined.

Never will the wisdom and common sense of the American public have been put to a more fateful test. The organized opposition to the bill must do its best. But, as fitting to a constitutional republic, the fate of American freedom lies with the people.

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Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

source:  http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/tblankley/2010/tb_03241.shtml