Tag Archives: Economy

Economy

Why Economic Recovery Is About Taxes

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Had a liberal encounter of the tax kind the other day. Addressing the Left’s refusal (or possibly inability) to understand why increasing taxes are not the way to go if you want to stimulate economic activity. It started over a proponent of the administration’s taxing those financial institutions that had paid back the ‘bailout’ money that they were given.

In the liberal mindset, if you oppose that, then you’re in the pocket of Wall St.. Forgetting for a moment the Robin Hood aspect of the tax, and the unequal application of the tax, I answered that logic with a short quiz. The guy’s, or girl’s, name was Anonymous.

Anon. Below are some multiple choice questions to consider.

Income is generated by:

1. Private enterprise

2. Government

Along the same line. The money that government gets via taxes comes from:

1. Private enterprise

2. Government

When government takes money out of the private sector via taxes, what effect does it have?

1. Takes money from their business.

2. Puts money into their business.

The economy is boosted when:

1. The government takes money out of the economy via taxes and spends it as it sees fit.

2. The government leaves as much money as possible in the private sector to be used by the private sector to spend as it sees fit.

Money generated by businesses belongs to:

1. The business owners and investors.

2. The government.

And one TRUE/FALSE:

Capitalism pays for Socialism: T/F

Depending on how you answer these questions should explain why it is always taxes, taxes, taxes that effect, either negatively or positively, economic activity, AND whether the form of economic system you prefer is free-market capitalism or some form of socialist/fascist amalgamation.

If you prefer the latter, then there is this thing called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that must first be abolished.

Economy, Florida, Media, Pensacola

Don’t Ignore Small Business

The article in the Pensacola News Journal showing the decline in business investment “Top 10 sales fall to $80M” painted a pretty good picture of slowing economic conditions and increasing uncertainty surrounding business investments.

Multi-million dollar projects are one thing. Businesses with those kinds of assets have people, if not departments, to tend to the details. But small business, really small business, the mom and pop venture, is one sector that can benefit with just a little assistance from local government. And the assistance I’m speaking of does not cost a dime.

There’s no better motivation to start a small family business than to find yourself unemployed. Current unemployment figures show there is plenty of opportunity for a new start-up for someone with a passion for a business or product for which there is market demand. Employed or not, you have way more potential to succeed than you know. Being unemployed may be all it takes to make up your mind to jump in with both feet to start your own business. Been there, done that. And there’s no greater satisfaction that I’ve experienced in the workplace than when the workplace is your own.

Depending on the business you have in mind, you may need more than one license, permits, and inspections along the way. You’ll have to comply with city, county, and state laws not only from the financial angle, but also from details like building codes, fire codes, and ADA compliant features that may be required. There are tax issues, federal, state, and local. There are insurance issues if you have employees. Having prior knowledge of these will save you time and money.

Let’s assume that after losing your job, you don’t have a boatload of cash to take your time in getting something going. You cannot afford to start paying rent for months on end while getting things ready. Inspections by various departments and jurisdictions may be required. Some of them must happen in a certain order. Learning this the hard way will cost you something that you can’t replace, time. And you can’t afford the financial setbacks you’ll incur for failing to comply with necessary details, beginning with the loss of business for not being able to open when you expected to.

So you have an idea of what you want to do. Maybe you took the extension courses offered by the University of West Florida on starting your own business? They are good, and inexpensive. For me it was like a college refresher course condensed into a few weeks. Maybe you’ve already run a business, but it wasn’t your own? Maybe you have a college degree in business or management? Those courses are helpful in a general sense, but do not cover the mechanics of what you will need to do in a legal sense, and in what order, before you can open your door for business.

You have a site selected that would be conducive to your business plan. But where do you start? Where do you go locally to get the ‘official guide to opening a business?’ That’s where the city and county can help. And there’s not been a greater need for this kind of help in decades.

Attracting big businesses/employers to the area is fine. Something the government should try to do. But let’s also try to develop the small business potential that is already here.

link: Top 10 sales fall to $80M

Update 1/24/2010: This post was reprinted in the Pensacola News Journal on the opinion page as a Viewpoint: Right time to promote small business growth

Economy, Politics

Open And Honest? Who Knew?

Watch out America. In the name of openness and honesty, Democrats in Washington are poised to show how much smarter they are than you, and the founding fathers.

It never was about stimulating the economy. If it was, they never would have done what the did. That’s why it didn’t take but about 3 months for the Obama administration to tie economic recovery to government-controlled health care-turned-health-insurance ‘reform.’ And the dumb masses bought it.

That was then. Now a majority of Americans are rejecting not only that premise but also are rejecting the extent that government will be controlling our lives  under Obamacare. Those that believe that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights still mean something would call it restricting personal liberty and freedom through an ever-growing and more powerful central government.

Centralized power is all important. So much so that what you want no longer matters. They are representing The One instead of The People and are prepared to do anything to get there. And if they’re willing to deceive you to get there, then you have to think they’ll do anything to stay there, keeping their majority status for generations and turning America into just another second class European socialistic regime.

There could not be a better example of how, on this issue, Democrats are putting their political agenda ahead of the will of the American people, who they are supposed to be working for.

How could they do that, you ask? What they could do would be to go to reconciliation where only 51 votes are needed instead of 60. And what could they do if Brown (R) should win the senate seat over Coakley (D)?

Massachusetts’s top election official says it could take weeks to certify the results of the upcoming U.S. Senate special election. That delay could let President Barack Obama preserve a key 60th vote for his health care overhaul even if the Republican who has vowed to kill it wins Democrat Edward M. Kennedy’s former seat.

According to Coakley, currently Mass. Atty. General, ‘Until a new senator is sworn in, Sen. Kirk is the senator.’

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) sort of gets it. He said ‘If Scott Brown wins, it’ll kill the health bill.’

I’ve got news for you Barney. If this bill makes it to the President’s desk, it’ll kill America.

Related links:

2010 Election, Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

As Not Seen On CSPAN

Labor union leaders from the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and the UAW met in Washington yesterday to (one could only guess) threaten to withhold support for Democrats in the 2010 election if the President went through with his wanting to levy a tax on people who have a good health insurance policy.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats stand within days if not hours of striking final deals on historic health care legislation after key labor unions won concessions and pledged their support.

What we could not see is the smoke and mirrors accounting they are applying to mask the cost to appease big labor. Taxing those policies was supposed to be part of paying for this plan. Absent that, there’s  more snake-oil on the health insurance menu.

Unfortunately, we could not see this ‘negotiation’ in action like the President said when he was a candidate. We couldn’t see who was representing who, like the President promised he would do, and on this very subject. The negotiations weren’t on either of the two CSPAN channels I get. Did you see it?

link: Health talks in overdrive with Obama pushing

Economy, Media, Politics

Shucking And Jiving In Washington

The contortions and obfuscations of facts and history as relates to this administration and its attempt to railroad health care  legislation upon all of America is laughable. Well, it would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

What’s worse is how the media gives it all a pass. Unfortunately for America, the media watchdog died last year.

Events of the last two days epitomize the shucking and jiving I’m talking about.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, for two days in a row, refused to reconcile the barring of C-SPAN from these final and all important deliberations to show the American people the openness that Obama promised when he was a candidate. Obama said on eight occasions he would use C-SPAN cameras ‘so the American people can see what the choices are.’ But Gibbs did it by saying he already answered the question and, that there has been a lot of open discussions. See the transcripts HERE. They’re out of this world.

Then there is the response of Speaker Pelosi, when asked about President Obama’s rejection of C-SPAN’s specific request and his promise to use C-SPAN while on the campaign trail and in Presidential debates. She flat-out laughed in the reporter’s, and your face. Saying ‘There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.’ And it gets better, or worse. She adds ‘there’s never been a more open process.’ What was impressive about that statement is that she said it with a straight face.

No doubt the administration is circling the wagons here. Betraying the public trust is not a trivial matter.  Question is, are we seeing acts of desperation, or is the Democratic leadership showing its true colors?

links: White House: We will NOT discuss broken C-Span promise | Pelosi on ObamaCare: There’s never been a more open process evah

Economy, Politics

How Do They Do That?

How does the Democrat plan to run the health insurance and health care industries cover 30-40 million more people and reduce the deficit by $132 billion? The short answer is it doesn’t do that in and of itself.

I’m reminded of a saying that I first heard in statistics class. Figures lie, and lairs figure. According to the CBO, it does it by over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases. That’s how. It cannot do it without enslaving the economy and the people with a government-run plan. That is, presuming the American people will want to be enslaved in that way.

If that’s not a prescription for economic disaster and the destruction of the best health care system (as bad as it is) in the world, I don’t know what is. The only success story here is that the government will be taking the giant leap in remaking America into the socialist/Marxist model that the Obama administration so worships. Hip Hip, Ho-ray! Or is it Ho-Ho-Ho?

link: Merry Christmas, from Harry

Economy, Politics

Universal Health Care Has A Track Record

Less Health Care For More Money: What’s The Catch?

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.

According to Kristof, Brodniak can’t get medical help because we don’t have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man “writhing in pain on the sidewalk.”

Continue reading Universal Health Care Has A Track Record →

Economy, Media, Politics

Today’s Special, Lies And Deception

The Obama administration is scrambling to get something, anything, passed that they can call health care reform. But it’s not because your health is so lousy and you’re going to die. According to surveys, most Americans, somewhere over 80% of them, are satisfied with their health care and health insurance situation. The emergency seems to be in the mind of the President to get something passed, else he’ll lose face with his rhetoric of the last year and a half.

Today, President Obama just had a pow-wow with Democratic senators and the two Independents to try and convince them to vote for this debacle of a health care bill. Today the President said that Americans want more affordable health care that will reduce the deficit. And he’s right. We do. Problem is, the bill in Congress won’t do either.

The irony is that he vowed not to vote for a bill that wouldn’t reduce cost and reduce the debt. He’ll sign it if it gets to his desk, through lies and deception, with help from lazy if not uninformed constituents still awestruck by the man who reads a great teleprompter, all with help from a media willing to let it all go unchallenged.

Paramount in this health care bill is the power and control that shifts from the folks to the government. That’s the goal. Not our collective health.

Another example is the way the President proposes to deal with the economy. Rather than the people making their own choices with their own money through reducing taxes and providing tax incentives for businesses to expand and hire, the President does just the opposite. Not only that, but HE is picking the winners and losers. HE as in the government. The government takes over industries and companies left and right. The government chooses to sell cars (and payback the UAW), so they have a cash for clunkers program that was an utter failure and had no long term effect on either the economy or the industry. Now, HE decides that manufacturers of caulking compound need an economic boost, not THE FOLKS in general, just these people. See the pattern here? Does Obama look anything like a little dictator? So the point of picking the Cash for Caulkers program is for the green-ness of it. It won’t help or stimulate the folks or the economy. Like putting air in your tires, it’s a good idea providing they are under-inflated, but it won’t do squat to make our economy recover, which ought to be his number one priority. Caulking a leaking window seal is a good idea, but if you don’t have a job or are working two jobs already to keep from losing your home, you’re not going to have money to spend on house maintenance, presuming you have a leaky house to begin with. And if you did, it won’t do anything for your job security.

Doing projects like that should come after we realize some economic recovery in the old fashioned free-market driven way. Not because we have a President who likes to act like a King who tells the people what he wants them to do.

President Obama, who has never run a business or made a payroll, says the ‘fat cats’ don’t get it. It’s Obama that doesn’t get it. Well, I’ll have to sort of take that back. What he does get is that socialism, and economic social justice works better for him. Because all that he has done and wants to do, will do only that. He said he didn’t like the Constitution. From what he is doing to America, it is obvious. He will remake America, to be just like Europe, and worse. His economic plan for America is a model for the global scale with his Cap & Trade scheme.  More social justice, only for the world. And of course, current and future generations of Americans will pay for that too, if he gets his way.

related picture: Hard Pill To Swallow

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics, United Nations, Venezuela

Controlling The Message On ClimateGate

A senior member of the United Nations climate change movement shut down a journalist at a climate change news conference in Copenhagen for asking about the leaked emails and deleted data. It was enough to make Hugo Chavez (the hemisphere’s idiot) proud.

It didn’t happen in Communist China, Iran, or Venezuela. It happened at a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Professor Stephen Schneider, who is a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had two armed UN security guards to order cameraman Ian Foster to stop recording. The guard then threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference.

Was it a gotcha question? Of course it was. But it was also a legitimate question that should be addressed. I mean really. How can you talk about Tiger Woods without also talking about his blond infidelity? How can President Obama talk about his administration without also talking about Bush?

How Professor Schneider handled the question, by removing the member of the media, just follows along the M.O. of the leaked emails. It’s called an inconvenient truth. Somebody ought to make a movie about that.

Here it is, as they say, caught on tape.

link: U.N. Security Stops Journalist’s Questions About ClimateGate

Economy, Florida, Politics

H.R. 4219, Audit The Stimulus

In one of the latest slap in the face to taxpayers, did you know that stimulus dollars, 6 million of them, were used to stimulate multi-millionaire and Hillary Clinton campaign pollster Mark Penn?

As for Mark Penn’s $6 million. That was pure and simple political payback. Not a job stimulus by any stretch of the imagination.

Hearken back to the last campaign. After it was clear that Hillary was not in contention, she made the statement that her campaign was in the hole for millions of dollars and that she would support Barack Obama if he would pay off her campaign debt. Well, it looks to me that this is just what happened, only I had to pay it with ‘stimulus’ dollars, not Barack Obama with his campaign dollars.

From my perspective, the only change I see that came to Washington with Obama’s election was that Chicago politics moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I’m sick of it.

For an administration that SAYS they are going to be open, read bills, deliberate bills on C-Span, and make bills available online for the public to see, doesn’t it just take the cake that a bill has to be introduced to force some transparency? H.R. 4219 will open the books on the so-called job stimulus. Well, that is if it will ever see the light of day.

It’s long past time for some transparency here, before we go one step further. Time to pull the administration’s pants down and take a look.

See press release below over auditing the spending of the stimulus money, or more correctly, our money, our kids’ money, and their kid’ money.

endofstoryMiller Press Release on Audit of Stimulus, December 9th, 2009

Miller, Wilson, Kingston, and Souder Demand Audit of Stimulus Funds

(Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Jeff Miller (FL-01), Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02), Congressman Jack Kingston (GA-01), and Congressman Mark Souder (IN-03) today demanded an audit of stimulus funds. Just this morning, reports showed that Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s pollster, received $6 million in stimulus money to preserve three jobs. Furthermore, the Administration still hasn’t thoroughly addressed the major discrepancies and inaccuracies of reporting on Recovery.gov. With the Government Accountability Office stating that one out of every 10 jobs created by the stimulus are also fake, it’s high time for Congress to act. The National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will create a bipartisan commission to investigate the effects of this “stimulus” bill.

Congressman Jeff Miller: “In my home state of Florida 52 jobs were created in the 34th Congressional District, according to the Recovery.gov website. 46 jobs were created in District 00. However, these districts simply don’t exist. How can the Administration expect us to trust their dubious jobs created numbers when they can’t even manage their own website? We need an audit of this spending immediately.”

Congressman Joe Wilson: “It’s time for Congress to demand answers on behalf of the hardworking taxpayers that we represent. The misnamed stimulus is one of the largest spending bills in our nation’s history and it is critical that American taxpayers receive adequate answers as to the whereabouts of stimulus funds. I can not fathom how Hillary Clinton’s pollster received $6 million to preserve just three jobs when that could sustain dozens of South Carolina’s families for life. I urge Speaker Pelosi to consider our legislation to ensure full accountability of every stimulus dollar spent.”

Congressman Jack Kingston: “What do you get for $18 million? The Obama Administration’s website that creates phony congressional districts and fishy jobs numbers. It’s time to pull back the curtain and get some of that transparency and accountability promised on the campaign trail. Until this Administration can provide the American people with an accurate accounting of their record breaking spending scheme, Congress should dry out the trough.”

Congressman Mark Souder: “Not only has the stimulus failed in its goal of reining in rising unemployment, the published report tracking the funds revealed imprecise statistics, nonexistent congressional districts and significantly overstated the number of jobs created. I am pleased to join Congressman Joe Wilson on this important legislation to put an end to this unaccountable stimulus spending spree. During this time of economic recession, Hoosier taxpayers deserve to know where and how their dollars are being spent.”

H.R. 4219, the National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (text can be found here) will create a ten member panel, appointed by the President and Democrat and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, will investigate how many jobs have actually been saved or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5); the circumstances in which those jobs have been saved or created; and, the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent the improper payment of funds. Following the investigation, the Commission will make recommendations on what changes could be made to save or create more jobs and what steps can be taken to prevent the improper allocation of taxpayer dollars.