“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”
– Barack Obama

I would like to know why I can’t drive my SUV, especially when winters here are icy. I need to get around in the winter too. Is NATO going to drop supplies to my house so I won’t have to drive my V8 GMC SUV? I worked hard for my money, and if I want to buy an SUV and drive it from the east coast to the west coast, WHY can’t I? It is my choice and my free will to do what I want with MY money.

Why can’t I eat as much as I want? If I like to eat, whether it be Whoppers, Big Macs, carrots, oatmeal or WHATEVER…why can’t I eat it? I will be the one who has to live with the consequences of my actions (i.e heart disease, obesity, higher insurance premiums, etc…). I am an adult and if I EARN the money to purchase things, and those things happen to be food, is it right to stop me, limit me or monitor me? It is my choice and my free will to do what I want with MY money.

Why can’t I keep my house set to 72 degrees? It’s winter here and really cold. I have a little one here and her pediatrician said to keep the house set between 70 and 74 degrees. Should I sacrfice my daughter’s health because some bureaucrat decided that 72 degrees is too hot? Maybe I am always cold and 72 deg is where I feel the most comfortable. I EARNED the money to PAY my heating bills and if I want to keep it at 72 deg because it makes me happy, why can’t I? It is my choice and my free will to do what I want with MY money.

Driving my SUV, eating what I want-when I want- how much I want, and keeping my house set to 72 degrees all make me HAPPY. Aren’t I afforded Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness under the Declaration of Independence? The last time I checked, we are still a Constitutional Republic. So my question is: Who, under a Constitutional Republic, can tell me what I can and can’t do so long as I am a non violent citizen practicing my right and freedom to pursue happiness? What’s next? All men aren’t created equal nor endowed by their creator to certain unalienable rights?! Are we Regressing or Progressing with statements and policies like the quote above? Will we remain a Republic or become a Nanny state embracing a socialistic Democracy? Is this what our Founding Fathers envisioned for our country when they declared independence?

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”- Thomas Jefferson- Founding Father, author of our Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of USA

Via Hot Air,The New York Times is reporting that Caroline Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration for the vacant New York Senate seat due to tax issues involving household help. Add this to the Geithner tax issues and I am struck by how many rich democrats do not pay their taxes. Perhaps the reason they are so eager to raise taxes on the rich, particularly Republicans, is that they assume everyone else is also cheating on their taxes.

It reminds me of all the rich liberals that lecture us on how the rich need to pay their fair share. And that evil rich conservatives need to stop fighting tax increases and be “patriotic”. Same thing with death taxes. We are told how we should pay a big chunk of our estate to the government when we die. Yet rich liberals are using trusts and other mechanisms to shield their estates from the death tax. Do you really think a Kennedy or Rockefeller is paying 45-55% to the government when they die? Of course not. They do not even pay their nanny taxes!

Cross-posted at The Opinionator

OK, the Democrats have convinced me. It’s time to hold hands across the aisle, sing kum-bah-yah and get down to the business of operating in sweet harmony. That’s right. And I am dead serious.

You know why we should reach across the aisle and hold hands?

Read More →

Unknown to many Americans is the taxation of their assets after death. The estate tax, also dubbed the “death tax” or “inheritance tax,” is a federally imposed levy on an individual’s possessions (liquidity, property, etc) at the time of their demise. Additionally, various states impose a “pick-up” tax on an estate, pursuant with Internal Revenue Code Section 2011, which allows them to tack on extra tax yielding in state revenue.

In 2001, congress passed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, which repealed the estate tax for the year 2010. In addition to this repeal, it emplaced various conditions on the estate tax which would raise the exclusion amount (amount of non-taxable assets) and gradually lower the top tax rate until 2010.

YEAR   EXCLUSION   TOP RATE
2001     $675,000         55%
2002     $1 million        50%
2003     $1 million        49%
2004     $1.5 million     48%
2005     $1.5 million     47%
2006     $2 million        46%
2007     $2 million        45%
2008     $2 million        45%
2009     $3.5 million     45%
2010     $0                    0%
2011     $1 million        55%

In 2011, the repeal will be rescinded and the exclusion/top tax rate will reset to near-2001 levels, with a 55% top tax imposed on assets over $1,000,000.

The estate tax works by deducting the current exclusion value from the gross value of an estate. The excess amount is then taxed at the current, tentative rate. For example, an individual, assuming no deductions, who dies in 2011 with an estate valued at $2 million, would pay $435,000 in tax.

There are various deductions (charitable contributions, debt, etc) that would allow an individual to pay less estate tax; furthermore, there are economic mechanisms such as inflation, which silently increase the unadjusted exclusion amount since inception. This means that individuals with an estate of, for example, $1,000,000 in 2001, would have an inflation-adjusted worth of $1,199,464 in 2008. When the estate tax is repealed in 2011, an individual in this situation would be thrown into the eyes of the estate tax, which would collect duty on $199,464 of their assets. Over time, such as 50 years, inflation would matter much more. A house valued at $300,000 in 1950 would be the equivalent of $2,143,568 in the year 2000.

The answer to this problem would be to create an adjusted exclusion value, which would rise or fall with core inflation. Of course, the real question is, should the estate tax be repealed once and for all? In a report by the Congressional Budget Office, in fiscal 2007, the federal government received $2.5 trillion in tax revenue. Of that, only $26 billion, or 1.04%, was from estate taxes.

President-Elect Barack Obama said he would freeze the estate tax at 2009 levels – $3.5 million exclusion at a 45% top rate. Considering 2007 only brought $26 billion in revenue from the estate tax, and its exclusion was at $2 million, it is safe to estimate that the revenue produced by Obama’s plan would be even less than is created currently. 2009 will be a testament to this theory, and Obama’s proposal.

Though the estate tax only concerns a small portion of the population, usually less than 50,000 individuals annually, it infringes on the fundamentals of capitalism and punishes success. Family owned businesses often have to sell their company due to the death of the owner because they can’t pay the strict estate tax. In addition, it also promotes fraud and other methods of hiding liquidity and asset value.

The estate tax is a rigid regulatory policy and hampers domestic growth and fiscal freedom. Proceeds from it hardly rationalize its existence, and when 2010 rolls around the corner, data will show the justification for a permanent repeal. Until then, it is nothing more than a soft tyranny.

From her always-interesting column:

However, I do lament the gradual disappearance of small, quirky local shows due to the trend toward national syndication. And I often get bored and impatient with the same arch-conservative message being drummed out 24/7. But let’s get real: Liberals have been pathetic flops on national radio — for reasons that have yet to be identified. Air America, for example, despite retchingly sycophantic major media coverage, never got traction and has dwindled to a humiliating handful of markets. The Democrats are the party of Hollywood, for heaven’s sake — so what’s their problem in mastering radio?

Instead of bleating for paternalistic government intervention, liberals should get their own act together. Radio is a populist medium where liberals come across as snide, superior scolds. One can instantly recognize a liberal caller to a conservative show by his or her catty, obnoxious tone. The leading talk radio hosts are personalities and entertainers with huge rhetorical energy and a bluff, engaging manner. Even the seething ranters can be extremely funny. Last summer, for example, I laughed uproariously in my car when WABC’s Mark Levin said furiously about Katie Couric, “What do these people do? Open fortune cookies and read them on air?”

The best hosts combine a welcoming master of ceremonies manner with a vaudevillian brashness. Liberal imitators haven’t made a dent on talk radio because they think it’s all about politics, when it isn’t. Top hosts are life questers and individualists who explore a wide range of thought and emotion and who skillfully work the mike like jazz vocalists. Talk radio is a major genre of popular culture that deserves the protection accorded to other branches of the performing and fine arts. Liberals, who go all hushed and pious at Hays Code censorship in classic Hollywood, should lay off the lynch-mob mentality. Keep the feds out of radio!

A (very) little additional commentary on Paglia, and her latest thoughts on Katie Couric, at my new blog.

Mr. Arkansas appears to have kicked off his 2010 Presidential election campaign this week in a column in Esquire magazine.  The article is quite a flattering profile from a clearly liberal author (remind you of any recent Republican Presidential candidates?).  The author goes so far as to describe Huckabee as “the nicest guy in a political party of not-very-nice guys”.  You can read the whole articlehere.

So, besides courting the liberal wing of the mainstream media (if Esquire can really be said to count as “mainstream”), what else is Huckabee doing?  Apparently, touting his centrist credentials and attacking his potential opposition.  The article takes a brief look at his new book “Do The Right Thing,” and mentions that Huckabee “caused a mini firestorm by taking a couple of uncharacteristically harsh swipes at Romney, whom he considered phony and high-handed.”  Yeah, that’s real rich coming from Huckabee.

Meanwhile, his economic populism is out full force:

“I mean, I just want to scream,” he says, “especially at these guys at the National Review, The Wall Street Journal, who are supposed to be these bastions of conservatism. And how can they call Barack Obama a socialist when everything they’re doing in economic and monetary policy is classic socialism? I find it so hypocritical. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a terrible mistake to revert back to welfare, because what Democrats are doing is pushing welfare for all people who are working individually, while you’ve got people on the Republican side pushing welfare for the highest CEOs in the wealthiest corporations in America. It’s insane.”

It’s like deja vu all over again.  And, what Huckabee campaign-prep would be complete without a couple of knocks at one of his principle rivals:

“Now I must say I did not think that either the Charlie Gibson interview or the Katie Couric interviews were unfair. In fact, if anything, Katie Couric was extraordinarily gentle, even helpful. [Palin] just…I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it. It was not a good interview. I’m being charitable.”

So there you have it.  Populism, centrism, courting the media, and a couple of shots at Romney and Palin who, while probably the two weakest of his potential competitors in 2012, are nevertheless people he will need to beat if he wants to run for the top job.  Is Mike Huckabee getting ready to run?

There seems to be a lot of happy talk surrounding Barack Obama’s recent trip to Capitol Hill, and his attempt to sell his stimulus bill to Republicans by adding a few ‘tax cuts.’  But bipartisan bonhomie notwithstanding, there’s no more reason to embrace Barack Obama’s stimulus plan today than there was a week ago.

It is still a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars, will do nothing to help the economy, and will blow an even bigger hole in a deficit that has risen from $162 billion to $1.2 trillion annually since Democrats took control of Congress. What Obama is selling and what he’s offering are two different things.  While the economy needs a genuine stimulus, Obama is offering to ‘spread the wealth.’  And in so doing, he’s brazenly disregarding his read-my-lips campaign pledge to offer a net spending cut at a time when everyone else is tightening their belts.

Under the proposal, as presently described, successful businesses would get no tax cuts.  Unsuccessful businesses would get taxpayer subsidies.  The government would be all in with respect to picking winners and losers in what used to be the free market.  Likewise, Obama’s “tax cuts” are actually an end run around welfare reform — giving the most money to people who pay little or no taxes, then taking that money away if they get a pay raise or a better job. Nothing proposed by Obama — not the infrastructure spending, not the aid to the states, and not the redistributive tax cuts — would help create jobs or wealth.  In fact, taxing the people of each state to give money back to their own state government isn’t just robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s robbing Peter to pay Peter.  If states need to raise more revenue, let their governors make that case directly to their taxpayers.

The best plan we are aware of to create jobs and wealth starts with making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent.  These reductions in capital gains taxes and dividend taxes, as well as the elimination of the death tax, are far more likely to get the economy moving again than anything proposed by Barack Obama or his Congressional allies. Absent that, there is no reason for Congressional Republicans to lend support in the crafting of an ineffective and wasteful pork barrel bill. 

If the Democrats will not make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, the GOP should not even hint at supporting the Democrats’ plan. Two Republican Senators, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, are already suggesting they can work with Barack Obama on his “tax cuts” as presented.  Just callling something a tax cut does not make it so, just as calling something a stimulus does not make it so. 

Mitch McConnell, Saxby Chambliss, and the rest of the Republican caucus could probably use some encouragement to avoid the siren song of tax cuts and stimulus before they lend their support to a bill that is neither.

There seems to be a lot of happy talk surrounding Barack Obama’s recent trip to Capitol Hill, and his attempt to sell his stimulus bill to Republicans by adding a few ‘tax cuts.’  But bipartisan bonhomie notwithstanding, there’s no more reason to embrace Barack Obama’s stimulus plan today than there was a week ago.

It is still a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars, will do nothing to help the economy, and will blow an even bigger hole in a deficit that has risen from $162 billion to $1.2 trillion annually since Democrats took control of Congress. What Obama is selling and what he’s offering are two different things.  While the economy needs a genuine stimulus, Obama is offering to ‘spread the wealth.’  And in so doing, he’s brazenly disregarding his read-my-lips campaign pledge to offer a net spending cut at a time when everyone else is tightening their belts.

Under the proposal, as presently described, successful businesses would get no tax cuts.  Unsuccessful businesses would get taxpayer subsidies.  The government would be all in with respect to picking winners and losers in what used to be the free market.  Likewise, Obama’s “tax cuts” are actually an end run around welfare reform — giving the most money to people who pay little or no taxes, then taking that money away if they get a pay raise or a better job. Nothing proposed by Obama — not the infrastructure spending, not the aid to the states, and not the redistributive tax cuts — would help create jobs or wealth.  In fact, taxing the people of each state to give money back to their own state government isn’t just robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s robbing Peter to pay Peter.  If states need to raise more revenue, let their governors make that case directly to their taxpayers.

The best plan we are aware of to create jobs and wealth starts with making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent.  These reductions in capital gains taxes and dividend taxes, as well as the elimination of the death tax, are far more likely to get the economy moving again than anything proposed by Barack Obama or his Congressional allies. Absent that, there is no reason for Congressional Republicans to lend support in the crafting of an ineffective and wasteful pork barrel bill. 

If the Democrats will not make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, the GOP should not even hint at supporting the Democrats’ plan. Two Republican Senators, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, are already suggesting they can work with Barack Obama on his “tax cuts” as presented.  Just callling something a tax cut does not make it so, just as calling something a stimulus does not make it so. 

Mitch McConnell, Saxby Chambliss, and the rest of the Republican caucus could probably use some encouragement to avoid the siren song of tax cuts and stimulus before they lend their support to a bill that is neither.

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Gamecock apologizes for recent Colorado governor faux pas; has updated his contact lens Rx and learned yet another humility lesson, this time with respect to the “two sources rule.” If you are unaware of the reason for this aside, don’t worry. This blog stands on its own.]

Given the post-1978 Three Mile Island history of Democrats standing in the way of economic development via radical environmental restrictions, which includes the President-Elects’ “green” tendencies in spades, the whole Obama promise to save or create three million jobs is called into question, unless one means only to create jobs for lawyers.

[We are also disturbed by the inclusion of the word “save” after first promising only to “create” two million jobs in an earlier ideation of the “stimulus” bill. Given that 154 million Americans are now employed, a President Obama could keep latest promise even if 151 million lost their jobs, but I digress.]

Michael Barone had earlier expressed some confidence that Obama’s choice of Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary meant that Obama was serious about job creation.

I didn’t share the confidence, mainly due to the “d” after his name, and neither was environmental lawyer and conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt:

In his townhall.com column, Hugh Hewitt cites my recent blogpost on Interior Secretary-designate Ken Salazar and raises the question of how Salazar will deal with polar bears. Yes, polar bears. As Hewitt points out in this column and as he has written on his blog at hughhewitt.com, environmental restrictionists want to use the threat that supposed global warming poses to polar bears as the basis of legal suits to stop economic development not just in Alaska but throughout the United States. This sounds outlandish, but it’s true. No economic growth because it might raise temperatures in the Arctic, which might in turn reduce the number of ice floes that these attractive carnivores jump on.

As Hewitt has pointed out, polar bear populations have actually been increasing lately. The species is not endangered but thriving. In February 1998, I visited the oil fields in the North Slope of Alaska. It was 40-below zero (don’t ask which scale: It’s 40 below in both Fahrenheit and Centigrade), and I was being driven around in an all-terrain vehicle on ice roads. The vehicle had been warmed up for three hours, but I could still see my breath inside; the road conditions were such that we couldn’t go more than 30 miles an hour. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I said to the driver, “if we saw a polar bear.” “No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “A polar bear can run faster than this car can go and can punch through the windshield with his paw. And to him, you’re lunch.”

Democrats say they want major infrastructure projects. The usual argument against them—that they take too long to get up and running to stimulate a recessionary economy—is weak because the current recession threatens to linger and perhaps turn into long-running deflation. But we can’t have major infrastructure projects if environmental restrictionists sue and stop them in the name of the polar bear. This is something Democrats, especially Ken Salazar, might want to think about.

The GOP will have an increasingly unemployed captive audience of non-lawyers this year that expect Obama to keep his jobs promise. Moreover, there is no greater threat to the short and long term economic health of America that Obama’s love for teaching us lessons with high energy costs and bankrupting the coal industry.

President Bush already paved the way with the prospective ban on Edison’s light bulb and inclusion of the polar bear as an endangered species.

If we don’t stop such fundamental changes sure to be disguised as “stimulus”, then the polar bear will no doubt outlive an extinct American prosperity.

Energy is what makes prosperity possible.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Barack Obama is well known for his dependence on the teleprompter. He’s also, in my opinion, a scripted debater. In the presidential debates, whether or not he bothered to actually answer a question, he invariably resorted to canned stump speeches.  It was a lot like watching a B. F. Skinner experiment where a lab rat is trained to push one of several levers based on a schedule of reinforcement. If a keyword appeared in a question, Obama pushed the appropriate lever in his brain and out came the right script. A great extemporaneous speaker he’s not.

Obama has also shown an astonishing comfort level with contradiction. Jim Geraghty of National Review Online coined the phrase, “all of Barack Obama’s promises come with an expiration date.” Many Obama promises, however, not only expire, but are reversed 180 degrees. His pledge to break with Washington establishment and the contradicting choice of Joe Biden as VP, his pledge before AIPAC to never divide Jerusalem and then his willingness, about 24 hours later, to retain the issue of a divided Jerusalem as a point of negotiation . . . these are just two examples among many well known Obama self contradictions. 

Obama’s also a gold medalist when it comes to poor judgment. His association with William Ayers and his long-term embrace of Jeremiah Wright are evidence enough. Ayers and Wright passionately champion kooky ideas. Most folks with decent judgment would not freely cavort with the likes of Ayers and Wright. Obama did.

And then, of course, there are the famous Obama gaffes like the 57 state classic.

So, here we have a guy who apparently doesn’t have a stellar memory (evidenced by his overreliance on the teleprompter). His judgment is sometimes questionable. He can contradict himself with an alarming alacrity and he can utter some surprisingly dumb things without batting an eyelash. Then, there’s all the ahs and ums whenever he does speak off the cuff. Could all of this be connected with something from Obama’s past?

Actually it could. Obama admitted in his autobiography to cocaine use. He’s never gone into detail about exactly how much cocaine he used, nor the exact period of time he used it. I guess he left it up to the imagination of the reader. And, since his medical records have remained secret (unlike John McCain’s), we still don’t know the extent of the use.

So, scientifically speaking, can cocaine use have long term effects on memory and judgment? Why, “Yes it can!”

In 2004, Seth Grant, Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, along with scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and US scientists showed that cocaine use affects the levels of the protein PSD-95. This protein is directly linked to both learning and long term memory. In lab tests, cocaine managed to halve the normal levels of PSD-95 (the results of this study were published in the journal “Neuron.”).

When interviewed by the press on his study, Professor Grant had this to say about cocaine use:

“The protein is important in remembering people, places and things, so cocaine strikes at the kind of learning which would include, for example, studying for examinations,“

And

“Cocaine damages the brain – there is no doubt about it,”

And

“We do not know how possible it is to reverse the damage of cocaine use, but abuse seems to have long term effects.”

I would also add this to Professor Grant’s warnings, “Use of cocaine may make you forever reliant on a teleprompter and/or scripted responses.”

Cocaine use, then, damages the brain, impairs learning and memory, and seems to have long term effects. Tying Obama’s past cocaine use to his lousy off the cuff speaking skills, his sometimes loopy judgment, and his gaffes is, at the very least, both possible and probable. Without those medical records, though, we’ll never really know the extent of his use or what it took for him to kick the habit (both marijuana and cocaine). We’ll just have to content ourselves with sitting back and enjoying (or agonizing over) the gaffe-tastic Obama, without the benefit of really knowing the why’s behind the gaffes.

“Was it the coke or is it natural?” is a question you can mull with minimal danger when discussing the oddities of some Joe that lives on your block, but it’s nothing but disconcerting when you can legitimately ask that question about the president-elect.

Please note that I do not begrudge anyone who has courageously overcome a serious addiction. Nor do I immediately disqualify them from public service. All Obama related snark aside, these folks have far more mettle than I’ve got in my personal arsenal. Such a commitment and life change is worthy of praise and celebration. My point, instead, is about disclosure.

We, as a nation, did not just hire someone to mow our collective lawn. We’ve just entrusted someone with great power and all the secrets our nation keeps. In this age of information, we expect much disclosure of our politicians and their privacy is sacrificed in exchange for our trust in their judgment and the power of their elected office. Obama was essentially given a free pass by the media with respect to his past. Much of that past is relevant to who he is, the soundness of his judgment, and how he might govern. Disclosure of past drug use and treatment for addiction are fair game for someone aspiring to the presidency. It is one factor among many in making an informed vote. And, enabled by a fawning media, it is one more piece of relevant information that Obama denied the public.