BluntPolitics.com

Higher marginal rates across income levels hurts growth, some say

BY DAVID HOGBERG INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

With the U.S. suffering from low GDP growth, job losses, a credit crunch and weak housing activity, Barack Obama’s tax plan would help or hurt, depending on which economist you ask.
   Obama would boost the tax burden over current policy, shift the tax burden to higher earners, and result in higher marginal rates for the top earners and for some in the middle class.
   His plan would raise taxes by $627 billion over 10 years, based on likely assumptions, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the liberal Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Alan Viard, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, claims the Obama plan would jar growth.
   “The higher marginal rates at the top would, all else equal, tend to reduce economic growth by impeding work and capital accumulation,” he said.
   Michael Ettlinger, vice president of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, disagrees.
   “I think it’s a good plan. It balances needed investments in energy and education with the need to be fiscally responsible,” he said.
   The Obama plan would raise the top two marginal rates of 33% and 35% to 36% and 39% and hike the capital gains rate from 15% to 20%.
   The effective top marginal rate of 38% for top earners could rise to 48% to 50%, including a new Social Security payroll tax on wage income above $250,000.
   While Viard notes that Obama’s tax increases wouldn’t be as large as previously thought, they would still do “harm to long-run growth from reduced incentives,” he said.
   Bob Williams, an economist with the Urban Institute, sees a milder effect.
   “Increasing the top rates may change how the people at the top realize income,” he said. “But it is unlikely to affect how much income they earn.”
   On the lower end of the income scale, Obama’s plan would expand the earned income tax credit and the payroll tax, plus help out with child care and retirement savings.
   It also would scrap income taxes on the elderly making less than $50,000 annually.
   “That puts money in the hands of those most likely to spend it,” said Williams.
   “The tax cuts are well targeted to boost demand,” Ettlinger concurred. “The credit reducing the payroll tax for lower income workers is exactly what our economy needs.”
   The Obama plan would cut taxes for many middle class earners. The ones left out would find tax credits phase out as income increases. “Many middle-income households will face somewhat higher effective marginal tax rates due to the phase-outs,” said Viard.
   Under the Obama plan, a family of four with an income of $31,000 to $45,000 could end up with a marginal tax rate 34% to 39%, 13 percentage points higher than under the current tax code.
   Even with lower overall tax takes, higher marginal rates could reduce the incentive to work or improve skills to seek higher-paying jobs.
   Much of the impact of the Obama plan may hinge on how it treats the federal budget deficit, which this year is projected to swell to more than $400 billion.
   “It depends on how Obama pays for his tax cut,” said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. “If there is no long-term borrowing, it will not have a long-term drag on the economy.”
   The Tax Policy Center analysis shows that the Obama plan would reduce the deficit by $800 billion over 10 years — assuming Obama would not cut or increase spending. But Obama has promised to boost spending by at least $126 billion annually, with increases in education, medical insurance, the environment and foreign aid.
   He has also promised to cut spending by an undetermined amount by ending the Iraq War, reducing subsidies to Medicare HMOs and farmers, and improving health insurance efficiency.
   Ettlinger worries that reducing the deficit could hamper government spending in energy infrastructure and education.
   “If the Obama plan were to solely focus on deficit reduction, it would harm the economy,” he said
   Economists also are divided over the short-term pros and cons of Obama’s plan, given the economy’s current weakness.
   “It is just what the economy needs since our current troubles are likely to move into next year,” Ettlinger said.
   Regarding the increases in the top rates, Williams said: “Raising rates in times of an economic downturn is a bad idea. Timing is important with this plan.”

By Ric Joyner

She made an incredible comment of ignorance. Question what if your generals say that pulling troops out would be a disaster? “We do not know what will happen when we pull out”.

WE DO KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN. Our fallen heroes sacrifice will be for nothing! Hillary, do you remember Vietnam when the Democrats DEFUNDED the war and the communists won and experts say that over 5,000,000 people were massacred? Iraqi’s have died during the war, but many thousands more will die after the fundamentalists get a hold of the country and it will be a new terrorist base!  We will tell the world community that when the going gets tough the US gets going….with our tail between our legs.

She is playing to the liberal left which wants no wars at all even to defend ourselves.

By By JOY ARPIN, M.D., Naples and Edinburgh, Scotland

Saturday, March 29, 2008

My husband’s life was saved by the cardiac team at NCH’s Downtown Naples Hospital.

Within two to three minutes of his walking into the emergency room, he had an EKG which diagnosed a massive heart attack. Treatment was initiated and within 30 minutes of his arrival he was in the cardiac angiography suite where an emergency angioplasty and stent insertion was done.

His previously asymptomatic extensive coronary artery occlusions required a quadruple-bypass procedure three days later when his condition stabilized.

The efficiency and competence of the NCH team is remarkable. And anyone who had arrived at the ER with similar symptoms would have been treated as expeditiously! This is the best health care in the world and the cardiac care at NCH is amongst the very best at any hospital in the United States.

Our summer home is in the United Kingdom, where the National Health Service’s failings are a constant topic in the news media. There are incredibly long wait lists to have an MRI or other investigative procedure, for referral to see a specialist for cancer or coronary care, or to have elective procedures (joint replacement, for example).

The care is rationed and anyone who can afford to doesn’t use it.

The government is always setting new “target times” for access to a specialist or for surgery. They talk in terms of months, not days.

There is a thriving private health-care sector and many of the affluent come to the U.S. for care. Even middle-class people elect to go to clinics in India for joint-replacement surgery rather than wait the 18 months or so in the NHS for treatment.

We very much enjoy our summers in the U.K., but I have no doubt that had my husband suffered the same event as occurred last week, he would not have had access to the remarkably high quality and rapid care that saved his life here in Naples.

While our experience is anecdotal, the statistics and data confirming the failings of government-run health-care systems in the U.K., Canada and elsewhere are readily available.

Our medical-insurance system may not be perfect, but to use the British or Canadian systems as models to improve ours is ridiculous.

I hope the public and the politicians look at the facts before we dismantle what we now enjoy.

“Change’’ is not always improvement.

Dr. Arpin is a retired surgeon.

By Ric Joyner

In contrast to Dr. King’s “I have a dream speech” Barack made the speech that may end his run for president.

The final determination of whether his speech had a positive or negative impact shall be  based on opinion, and will depend on who you are voting.

Let’s talk facts. Reverend Wright said these key items of hate speech from his pulpit.

1. The US attacked our own country on 9-11

2. The US injected aids into the black population

3. That Jesus was a black person and put down by rich white folks

Barack also said he would not disown Reverend Wright just as he wouldn’t his grandmother who occasionally said racist things. Thus, the conclusion is that Barack stands by his “man”. Standing by your man may cause the loss of your presidency. It will remain to be seen.

Good character aspect for Barack, but it is not enough because he is essentially saying that the black experience is different and that whites will never understand. For the candidate who wishes to unite the country he isn’t doing a good job. First, he hasn’t done anything to cross the isle in congress and work with republicans and he hasn’t done anything on race either. If a white preacher said racist and hateful comments, he would be run out of town on a rail by liberals, and the liberals would trash the white preacher unmercifully. But it is one of their own, and thus more difficult to sweep under the rug. Is it even possible for a liberal to be racist? If you use your common sense…it apparently is!

This will not go away for Barack and his national polls have dropped 17% nationwide in a week!

by Alan Caruba
Issue 103 - March 12, 2008

I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message.

Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly relentless, a modern version of the Mongols on horseback who swept out of the East to conquer everything before them until they reached the gates of Europe. These days the Greens have long since conquered Europe.

One thing alone stands against the Greens. The SCIENCE does not support them. Their sense of moral superiority, their contempt for all things modern, their resistance to all forms of energy except the weakest—wind and solar, and at the very heart of the Greens’ message is a contempt and hatred for the human race.

Humans have come to dominate life on Earth because we know how to adapt to the planet. We know how to use its minerals, the riches of its plant life, the domestication of its animals, and its reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission, to fuel the creation of great cities, farms and ranches, and everything that passes for modern civilization.

Long ago humans conquered the continents of the Earth and its great oceans to spread everywhere. Humans now fly between continents in hours. Everywhere on the face of the Earth humans now communicate with one another via the Internet.

For billions of years the Earth existed without humans and it will do so again when we cease to inhabit it. As a species, we are newcomers, but like every other species that lived on planet Earth—95% of which are extinct—we are subject to forces far greater than anything we possess.

To suggest that humans actually cause climate change is such idiocy that the Earth itself reminds us daily of our vulnerabilities. The news is full of tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and wildfires.

On February 7, Investors Business Daily had an editorial titled “The Sun Also Sets” in which it cited the views of Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council. In essence, Tapping wants people to know that solar activity such as sunspots, i.e., magnetic storms, “has been disturbingly quiet.”

It’s useful to know that global temperatures and events closely reflect solar cycles.

The lack of activity “could signal the beginning of what is known as the Maunder Minimum.” While solar cycles tend to last about 11 years, the lack of normal or increased activity can trigger the Maunder Minimum, an event that occurs every few centuries, can last a century or more, and causes a colder earth.

The most recent such event was the mini-Ice Age that climatologists date from around 1300 to 1850. In the midst of this there was a distinct solar hibernation from around 1650 to 1715.

“Tapping reports no change in the sun’s magnetic field so far this cycle and if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.”

If these events continue and become a cycle of cooling, it represents a major threat to the Earth’s population because it means that food crops will fail and, with them, the means to feed livestock, and the rest of us.

If you have been paying attention to global weather reports, you know that China has had the heaviest snowfall in at least three decades. David Deming, a geophysicist, in a December 19, 2007 article in The Washington Times, noted that, “ South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918.” This occurred across the entire Southern Hemisphere. “ Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever.”

It must be said that one big blizzard does not an Ice Age make, but a whole series of events that suggest a cooling cycle may well be the warning that is being ignored in the midst of the vast global warming hoax.

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. He recently published a commentary asserting that a global cold spell could replace global warming. Note that the Earth has been warming—about one degree Fahrenheit—since the last mini-Ice Age ended around 1850. “The real reasons for climate change are uneven solar radiation”, said Dr. Sorokhtin, while citing others that include the Earth’s axis gyration and instability of oceanic currents.

“Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface.” Yes, the Sun itself goes through periods of change. Dr. Sorokhtin believes that “Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.”

There is a reason scientists refer to our current era as an “interglacial period”, i.e., a time between Ice Ages.

Up to now, the mainstream media has ignored the cold reality of the Earth’s known cooling cycles. They have been in complete thrall to the howling of Al Gore with his endless lies about an imminent warming. Given the accolade of a Nobel Prize and even a Hollywood Oscar, why should people unschooled in science believe otherwise?

The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change whose reports have been based, not on hard science such as observations of solar activity, but on flawed, often deliberately false computer models, has been the driving factor behind the global warming hoax. What better way to assert political and economic control over the Earth than to create a global crisis? To their credit, many participants in the IPCC have protested these reports.

Large numbers of scientists have sold their soul to the global warming lies in order to receive millions in research grants, but increasingly other scientists have been coming forth to tell the truth. On March 2-4, several hundred will convene in New York for the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change to offer papers and serve on panels disputing and debunking the global warming hoax.

Beyond the climatic threat of a cooling planet is the one posed by U.S. politicians and their counterparts in Europe who are seeking to impose all manner of regulation and limits on energy use based on the false assertion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming.

They want to mandate a “cap-and-trade” scheme that will make some people and industries wealthy selling credits that will permit greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not greenhouse gases we need to fear, it is the action or, in this case, the inaction of the Sun.

At the very moment the Earth is on the cusp of what is likely to be a very long cooling and possibly a full scale repeat of the last Ice Age, all the engines of government, nationally and internationally, are trying to inhibit the discovery, extraction, and use of energy reserves that will be needed to cope with climate changes that will impact millions and, ultimately, billions of people.

All the wind turbines and solar panels in the world will not keep you warm in your home or apartment when a short or long term cooling of the Earth occurs. Ironically, as the Greens rant about so-called endangered polar bears in the Arctic, the bears are far more likely to survive than humans.

What controls the Earth’s climate? The Sun!

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

By Ric Joyner

Hold on to your wallet….

The "Tax and Spend" democrats will never learn that you cannot tax people into prosperity. The Senate just passed the ability to end the Bush Tax Cuts and voted not to control spending! This will mean an added cost to working families and is horrible drain on the economy.

George Bush gave us tax cuts that got the economy moving again from the ravages of Bill Clinton’s tax increases, but didn’t reign in spending. The Senate Dems voted to kill the Bush tax cuts, and opposed spending cuts! So the definition of Tax and Spend Liberal still defines the  democratic party! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337769,00.html

The incredible arrogance of this thinking is swallowed hook line and sinker by the "working Dems" as championing "tax the rich". The problem is they can’t define the rich when challenged! They also don’t realize that the rich pay most of the taxes in the country and provide jobs.

The "rich" are never really defined by the liberal Dems. But here is an article that lays out exactly the way people are taxed.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_19_56/ai_n13673328

When I ask my relatives, who are die hard Dems, who believe in taxing the rich (even though it may be a widow in retirement) to let me know when they will see those tax cuts in their paycheck and helping the poor? They don’t have an answer except, you are a Bush fan and Bush is a liar…. They are not interested in conservative issues of not taxing and not spending. The Bush hating is all they have on their minds.

BTW when those tax bills come where do they go? Who do they pay? Certainly not the local merchant or the local poor.

Got another memorial we can build in DC?

Where is everyone’s common sense?

In Houston during Obama’s WI victory speech he made an incredible promise:

“We are going to lead by example, by maintaining the highest standards of civil liberties and human rights, which is why I will close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus and say no to torture.”

Are  you kidding? This comment is right out liberal feel good, and is based on “America is bad” philosophy. Where is the greatest generation (WW2), and FDR when you need them? The Greatest Generation would never tolerate giving Nazi’s (ideologues that wanted to conquer the world, and kill those who were the undesirables) access to American courts… the same liberties as Americans! Insane! We are in a war. A war to destroy, and enslave America to the will of radical Islam. This proves Obama’s inexperience, and he is not fit to be Commander in Chief.

Some of the terrorists have been released, and been caught attacking our troops in IRAQ!!! 

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/12/29/2007-12-29_freed_to_kill_again.html

Voting for Obama seems to embrace the craziness of liberal “appease our enemies”. I am appalled at this statement by Obama, and he should be taken to task. I hope McCain challenges him on giving aid, and comfort to the enemy.

Where is the common sense? Giving terrorists the same rights as Americans…the same folks who are attempting to kill us!