Tick Tock

Fiscal Reality Central

If you watched The Big Zero's press conference last night, you heard him say that there is virtual agreement from the economic community on the need for government spending. Yet another lie. Please visit the Cato Institute's Fiscal Reality Central and read their full-page ad listing hundreds of economists who disagree with The Big Zero.

The Big Zero's address tonight

Dear Reader, during The Big Zero's prime time press conference this evening, if you hear The Big Zero use a phrase like this:

"...this is the worst economy since The Great Depression..."

make sure to scream "Liar!" at the television. This is most assuredly NOT the worst economy since The Great Depression. It is, however, the worst economy since The Carter Years.

Yesterday, we almost became France

I haven't seen a lot of mention of this today, so I want to make sure to get it in black and white.

We almost became France (or Russia or Venezuela) yesterday with this stupid, government-purchasing "bailout" of Wall Street. The Federal Government would have purchased mortgages. If the Federal Government purchases something, it can direct what happens with that something. This is a frightening prospect. It is called Socialism. Government owns stuff/everything, and it can direct what happens with stuff/everything. As Jeb Hensarling said yesterday, "if we lose our ability to fail, we will soon lose our ability to succeed." This is what France is. It's why nothing much comes out of France anymore, besides wine and cheese. They spend two months in the summer on government-mandated vacation, and nothing gets done. Their national productivity is awful. We don't want that. And if this "bailout" nightmare had passed, there would have been no turing back. It would have changed the American economy forever. Forever.

So, a huge "thank you" today goes to the House Republicans who stood on Free Market principles and said "no" to Socialism. Stay strong, and get some of your friends to come back to the Free Market side. The Defeat-ocrats and the Lame-Duck-in-Chief aren't going to quit anytime soon.

Sweet

When I heard that Boehner had agreed to the deal, I was really concerned. Thankfully, the rest of the Republicans stayed strong. And even more thankfully, Bug Eyes is the most ineffectual Speaker of the House in modern history. This black-hearted, swill-spewing, ultra-partisan hag couldn't even count the members of her party before having a vote. She wound up needing eleven more Defeat-ocrats to seal the deal.

Oh, and this ranting squeal didn't help things either:

Now, let's embark on some Free Market reforms that might actually help the situation: changing the accounting rules to bring them in-line with reality, suspending the repatriation tax, suspending or even fully cutting the capital gains tax. We don't need Socialism in order to fix Capitalism.

House Republicans, just continue to say "NO"!

Please, please, please, just say "no" to any bailout bill that comes forward. We need to educate the public about the Defeat-ocrat lies that the bailout needs to be bi-partisan. If the Defeat-ocrats want this ridiculous bill, the Defeat-ocrats can vote for it and pass it all by themselves. They do not need any Republican votes to get it done. The only reason that Bug Eyes wants Republicans to vote for it is to provide cover for her minions when they turn on the Republicans five seconds after Bush signs it into law.

You're doing a terrific job, so far. Stay strong. Just continue to say "no".

Need money on Wall Street?

There's a one very simple thing to be done. It will solve a whole lot of the problem, and it will prevent the need for taxpayers to reward gamblers. Here it is: eliminate the Capital Gains tax. Then get out of the way for the flood of money that will come pouring back into the country. No taxpayer bailout will be needed.

Of course, this isn't about solving the problem. It's all about Defeat-ocrats gaining more control of our lives. And blaming Republicans for it.

Lower tax rates lead to higher revenues . . . in Hong Kong

Yet another example of the demonstrated effects of lower tax rates.

Hong Kong's financial chief said Wednesday he will cut salary and corporate taxes and abolish duty on beer and wine after a booming economy pushed the city's budget surplus to a record high.

In his maiden budget speech, Financial Secretary John Tsang said he would increase spending on health services and introduce measures to bridge the widening wealth gap and reduce air pollution.

Duty on beer and wine -- currently at 40 percent -- will be cut with immediate effect.

Tsang estimated the budget surplus would reach a record 115.6 billion dollars (14.8 billion US) in the fiscal year to March, four and a half times the government's forecast and nearly twice as much as last year's figure.

The territory's fiscal reserves will reach 484.9 billion dollars, he said.

Tsang attributed the surplus to higher-than-expected tax revenues from the city's booming stock and property markets as well as company profits and salaries.

Tsang fulfilled the government's last year promise to cut salaries tax to 15 percent in 2008-09 from 16 percent and the corporate tax rate to 16.5 percent from 17.5 percent.

He also announced a one-off tax reduction of 75 percent of salaries tax and tax under personal assessment with a ceiling of 25,000 dollars.

[emphasis mine]

Wonder when we'll see our own lower tax rates made permanent?

What should we do about the "I don't want to be held responsible for my actions" crisis?

Here's the scene in Cleveland, Ohio.

At 9422 Chagrin Street, a hand-scrawled sign attached to a window indicates someone lives there: "Please Used."

After three rings of the bell, Sarah Evans, 60, opens the door with a mixture of curiosity and alarm.

She says she is one of the last people left on the street. And she is on the verge of losing this two-bedroom house in which she has lived for more than 30 years because she simply cannot afford her monthly payments.

It is a complicated story. She refinanced in 2003, but did not realize the document she signed included provisions to radically increase the interest rate.

She stopped making payments in 2006 and shows her unpaid bills totaling 24,000 dollars.

Her bank is in the midst of eviction procedures.

As well it should be. I am quite certain that, if Mrs. Light Bulb and I were to fall $24,000 behind in our mortgage payments, it wouldn't take over a year for our bank to evict us from our home. I'd guess six months at most.

But why did this happen in the first place? According to the fourth paragraph, "it's a complicated story." Really? How complicated can a refinance be? From the same paragraph:

She refinanced in 2003, but did not realize the document she signed included provisions to radically increase the interest rate.

Did not realize? Let's translate that into reality, shall we? "Ms. Evans did not read the document she signed." And so, instead of living up to the agreement to which she legally committed herself, she has decided to purposefully become delinquent in her mortgage payments. And just who is to blame for this?

For county treasurer Jim Rokakis, the greed of the banks is to blame for this man-made disaster.

"All you needed was a pulse to buy a house. Some loans were written with no money down, no proof of buyer's incomes. They did not even check what people were saying. Most of those folks were jobless," he said in an interview.

"Shaker Heights was the perfect storm: poor folks, unemployed and a desire to get a piece of the American Dream."

Ah yes, the greed of the banks. Because, you know, the banks came into town and held a gun to the head of each home owner and made them refinance their fixed rate mortgages into adjustable rate mortgages. Those nasty banks.

I gotta tell you, I'm sick to death of hearing about these cases. I do have compassion for these people; losing your home must be an awful, awful thing. But if they want to find someone to blame, they need to look in the mirror. For most of us, purchasing a home is the single biggest financial transaction we will ever make in our lives. If you and I don't read every single word on every single page of our mortgage agreements, shame on us.

What should we do about the "I don't want to be held responsible for my actions" crisis? As Michelle Malkin says, "Suck. It. Up."

What a crock of stimulus

Via Michelle Malkin, this excerpt from The Examiner explains "stimulus" Washington style:

If somebody grabbed your wallet and then handed you back a $20 bill, would you be grateful? Realizing the money was yours to begin with, you would probably call the cops rather than thank the thief.

President Bush’s latest gimmick to stimulate the economy by giving back to taxpayers $800 of their own money is the Washington equivalent of the “generous” thief. The biggest fairy tale in Washington isn’t Barack Obama’s voting record on the war in Iraq, but the notion peddled by Republicans and Democrats alike that the government has a big pot of its own money that it generously gives to people by “injecting” it into the economy as a stimulus.

In fact, government has only our money or money it borrows from lenders. The problem is it costs the government a major portion of every dollar it takes from us in collecting it and paying the interest on dollars it borrows. Why not just let us keep our money in the first place?

Want real economic stimulus? Make the 2003 tax cuts permanent. And slash government spending by 5%, just five percent. I've heard it said before: "any manager who can't cut their budget by 10% should be fired." Of course, government isn't the real world, so we'll set their goal at half that, just to make it easy on them.

Want to jump-start home buying? Reduce property taxes. Let people know that when they find a house they think they can afford, the taxes added on to their mortgage payment won't make the house unaffordable.

Want to reduce the price of oil? Have a big oil company announce that they're increasing production/supply or, God forbid, that they're going to start drilling in ANWR.

The worst part is that Republicans in Congress have gone along with the Defeat-ocrats in all this. Neil Cavuto was right: the Defeat-ocrats have truly won the day.

Happy Tax Freedom Day!

I hope you have a wonderful Tax Freedom Day. The Tax Foundation has calculated that today is the day that you begin working for yourself instead of the government. All of the wages you have earned so far this year will (on average) go to pay your taxes. From here on out, your earning money to pay your bills. Doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy?

Happy Tax Freedom Day!

Happy Tax Day!

By way of World Net Daily, comes this article by W. James Antle III in the American Spectator.

Despite several major federal tax cuts since 2001, Washington still helps itself to a very large slice of the national income. The average family devotes a higher percentage of its income to taxes than food, clothing, medical care or shelter. And I do mean "average," not members of the much-maligned richest 1 percent -- factoring in payroll taxes, a family of four earning $50,000 surrenders nearly a third of that income to the feds.

Yet we docilely pay. As the American Enterprise Institute's Kevin Hassett pointed out in Sunday's Washington Post, the levies that provoked our ancestors' historic tax revolts against the British were pathetically small by today's standards. The tax take that helped bring about the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence was about 2 percent.

[emphasis mine]

Did you get your taxes filed on time? Did you pay more taxes this year than you did last year?

No, Mr. Light Bulb, I'm getting money back, so I didn't pay any taxes.

Yes, I've actually had people say that to me. Apparently, these people don't understand that they are getting back only the amount that they over-paid to the IRS. They don't seem to understand that they still yielded to the IRS their Total Tax (line 63 on the 1040 long form). And I'm not even considering Social Security and Medicaid taxes.

Here's an exercise to do this weekend. Find your 2006 Total Income (line 22 on the 1040 long form). Then look on line 63 of the 1040 long form (or whatever line is labeled Total Tax on the other 1040 variations) for your Total Tax. Now divide your Total Tax by your Total Income. The result is the percentage of your income you paid as income tax.

Question: how does it compare to 2 percent?

And the award for "Best Economic Expansion" goes to...

In an article I found while perusing the Drudge Report this morning, spokesmen for both the Bush and Clinton administrations are trying to claim the title of "Best Economic Expansion by an American Economy". Thankfully, the responsible journalist got a third party view from Larry Kudlow. Here's his spot-on summation.

Kudlow said neither Bush nor Clinton have fundamentally transformed the U.S. economy in the way that former President Reagan did a quarter century ago. He credited Reagan's economic reforms for growth in the Gross Domestic Product in 93 of the last 98 quarters.

"Since the early Reagan years, we have had 25 years of virtually uninterrupted prosperity," Kudlow said. "Because of the Reagan reforms - the deregulation, the lower taxes, the disinflation - we have transformed the economy from a top-down, government-run operation into a free market, capitalist economy with durability and resilience."

Yet another win for the Gipper.

There's one secret the drive-by media keeps really well

And that's our nation's economy. By any measure, we are living in a very prosperous time and experiencing a healthy national economy. Much of this is due to the enactment by Congress of President Bush's tax cuts. Check out the graph below:


It comes from the President's State of the Economy Overview. Did you know that 7.2 million jobs have been created since 2003? You certainly wouldn't know it if you listed to the drive-by media. I urge you to download and read the entire report.

From President Bush's most recent State of the Union address:

A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy – and that is what we have. … This economy is on the move, and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government, but with more enterprise...

Via John Hinderaker at the Power Line

Don't you wish we had a roaring economy?

Because if we had a roaring economy,

• the stock market would be at record levels
  
• unemployment would be low
  
• housing starts would be rising
  
• inflation would be in check
  
• our nation would have a fantastic Gross Domestic Product and great productivity especially when compared to other countries

Wait a minute . . . oh, never mind.

Suppose we had a great economy and nobody noticed?

I've been long-winded lately. So I'll take a rest...and let someone else be long-winded on a great topic. With a big hat tip to the Power Line brainiacs, I must recommend you read Americans Hate their Fabulous Economy at Back Talk. The lead paragraph excites me.

Polls consistently show that Americans are rather negative about the economy, and many have wondered why that might be considering that our economy is the envy of the world (as well it should be). The source of our pessimism is a bit of a mystery, and it is one that I am going to pursue. For the moment, I'll simply note that I have identified what may be a contributing factor to our unwarranted despair: reporters rarely use charts, and that allows them to wax poetic about the "jobless recovery," "worrisome signs of inflation," "record setting deficits," and other such nonsense. Charts anchor the mind to the raw data, which makes it hard to use bumper-sticker slogans that mislead (and demoralize) more than they clarify. In any story about the economy, there is never an excuse not to use a chart, but reporters almost never do. [emphasis mine]

It really does excite me. Well worth your time.

The Tax Cut that won the Cold War

Being a Cold War history freak, I couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to share this with you. A fellow named Drew McKissick has posted "The Tax Cut that won the Cold War" on the Wizbang Bomb Squad.

A few weeks ago marked the silver anniversary of one of the most pivotal events in American economic and foreign policy history. It was twenty-five years ago on August 13th that Ronald Reagan signed into law the Kemp/Roth tax cuts, also known as the Economic Recovery Act of 1981—legislation which helped set in motion the events which shaped the world in which we live today.

The bill reduced American income tax rates by approximately one-third across the board, and unleashed the pent up power of an economy besieged by double digit inflation, double digit interest rates and double digit unemployment.

The result was an economy that grew at phenomenal rates, created tens of millions of jobs, raised personal incomes and more than doubled overall revenues to the US Treasury, (something liberals and most economists said couldn’t happen). In addition, investment and entrepreneurship blossomed, helping to foster the technology boom that has impacted just about every aspect of our lives.

It's a wonderful article. Something our kids should learn about in their history books.