My Personal Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Go Rick!

Grandpa Vanderhof doesn't :)

This is a great clip from the classic 1938 movie "You Can't Take It With You", by Frank Capra with Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Stewart.

Incredible graphs showing Federal Government spending - and how in 2052 ALL Federal taxes (IF historic taxation levels are kept) will be spent on entitlement programs. So I guess that means we all need to buy a tank or fighter jet to defend ourselves from foreign enemies, because obviously we won't be able to rely on the Federal government to do so.

Check out this graph, and the others on Heritage's website:

If future taxes are held at the historical average, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will consume all revenues by 2052. Because entitlement spending is funded on autopilot, no revenue will be left to pay for other government spending, including constitutional functions such as defense.

Thanks to Rick Santelli for getting us started last year by having the courage to stand up and speak the truth! Good job Mr Santelli! Keep up the good work.

And Happy Birthday Tea Party!!

Great little video of a tea party out in Tucson AZ.

HT: Hotair

The guy did a good job holding the line and not allowing Matthews to fluster him.

Notice the big government Statist (Granholm) calls the Capitalist (Wynn) a simplistic person, despite his obvious achievements in creating and generating thousands of jobs in the private sector - and self-insuring them to boot! All the while Granholm's state has record unemployment and cities that are almost bankrupt. Sadly that's how big government liberals view everyone else, simplistic fools - when the reverse is really the truth.

"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilizations history. For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody. The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for their labor." - Steve Wynn

Obscene 'profits' by our government, not the oil companies.

I am in the middle of Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny and he mentioned the Investor's Business Daily editorial below, which outlines the outrageous amount of taxes that the government has slurped from taxpayers through excise fuel taxes. The governments 'profits' on gas is more than double the true profit of the often demeaned oil companies. Talk about obscene!!

And it's not just Exxon Mobil that's paying the freight. From 1977 to 2004, according to Tax Foundation data, U.S. oil companies cleared $630 billion after taxes while paying $518 billion in federal and state corporate taxes at an average rate of 45%.

Over the same period, an additional $1.34 trillion in excise fuel taxes was collected from consumers by the oil companies and turned over to various governments.

Full editorial 

Enjoy that new energy bill that will be coming your way!

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation."

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

These disclosures will probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats' cap and trade bill. The House of Representatives approved it by a remarkably narrow margin in June -- the bill would have failed if only six House members had switched their votes to "no" -- and it faces significant opposition in the Senate.

One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."


One difference is that while Heritage's numbers are talking about 26 years in the future, the Treasury Department's figures don't have a time limit.

"Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately," says Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request. "It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."

"They're not telling you the cost -- they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."

The FOIA'd document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: "Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually." (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.

One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: "It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX." The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption (nor, for that matter, should federal agencies be in the business of possibly suppressing dissenting climate change voices). You'd hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the "most open and transparent in history" would be more forthcoming than this.

Click here for the rest of the article.

A little something to start your Labor day off right...

Well, at least according to our fearless Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D -NV).

This is really unbelievable! How in the world could this man sit straight-faced and say these things? AND then on top of that be selected to lead the U.S. Senate! Only in America!

LOL...

This is going to be interesting...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The sheriff in Alabama's most populous county may call for the National Guard to help maintain order, a spokesman said Tuesday, after a judge cleared the way for cuts in the sheriff's budget and hopes dimmed for a quick end to a budget crisis.

Circuit Judge Joseph L. Boohaker ruled that leaders in Jefferson County — now trying to head off a municipal bankruptcy filing of historic proportions — could go ahead with plans to slash $4.1 million from the budget of Sheriff Mike Hale, who had filed a lawsuit that temporarily blocked spending cuts for his office.

About 1,000 county workers already are on unpaid leave because courts threw out a key county tax, and Hale has warned that reductions to his budget would mean fewer patrols by deputies and decreased courthouse security.

A spokesman for Hale, Randy Christian, said the sheriff told Gov. Bob Riley after the ruling that state assistance may be needed to perform basic law enforcement tasks once the department's current funding is exhausted in early September.

"We will certainly be looking at calling in the National Guard," said Christian.

Hale may have to cut as many as 188 deputies and almost 300 civilian workers out of more than 700 employees total because of Boohaker's ruling, Christian said. That would leave just enough workers to staff the county's two jails, which hold about 1,000 prisoners on average.

Christian said the department couldn't close either jail or release inmates, but it would send as many prisoners as possible to the state prison system, which already is badly overcrowded.

Click here for the full article.

And the NY tax info that Hannity gives is incredible!

"We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer, yes that's what I'm telling you." - Joe Biden