"There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque is being funded."
Those wishing to cloak themselves in tanning-bed bronze are paying more for the service these days, thanks to a new federal tax that proprietors began collecting this month.Oh, but this is for healthcare. Still a broken promise:
Money collected from the tax goes to help fund the nation's new healthcare program, an effort to provide health insurance for all.
About 18,000 mom-and-pop businesses across the country will have to collect the tax.
"This tax is a on group of people who are not big wage earners," said Overstreet "This is a recession. People are already hurting and cutting back on things like that."
In addition to having to charge their customers the tax or pay it themselves, those small businesses will have the burden of preparing the paperwork and will already have taken on the additional expense of updating their accounting process.
According to ITA, the Internal Revenue Service will collect $2.7 billion over the next 10 years with this tax.
His detailed campaign plan stated that his proposed improvement in health insurance and health technology "is more than covered" by raising taxes on the wealthy alone.
Instead of attending a memorial service for the eleven workers killed, Obama flew to California to raise funds for Barbara Boxer
Obama went golfing ten times since the explosion in the Gulf
Obama turned down 13 countries that offered to help us clean up the Gulf
President Obama has refused to return BP's contributions; he is the largest recipient of their campaign donations over the past twenty years
Obama announced a job-killing drilling moratorium that could cost Louisiana $2.97 billion in revenue and 7,590 jobs directly related to the oil industry
Obama repeatedly denied requests from Gulf Coast lawmakers for necessary cleanup items like oil-blocking booms and skimmers
Obama originally denied Louisiana officials permission to build up barrier islands between the coast's marshes and the gulf
Obama let 10 days pass before sending any Cabinet-level officials to Louisiana's coast
Obama's Interior Department Chief of Staff rafted with wife on "work-focused" trip in Grand Canyon during the spill
Obama said that the Gulf disaster "echoes 9/11"
Obama attended private concerts by Paul McCartney and Kelly ClarksonObama took two vacations (one to his hometown Chicago and one to Asheville, North Carolina)
The liberal think tank Center for American Progress appears to have more influence on spill policy than the president's in-house advisers
Employment among 16-to 19-year olds in May grew by just 6,000, the smallest increase since 1969, when teen jobs fell by 14,000, according to government data analyzed by employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In May 2008 and 2009, teen employment grew by over 110,000.
President Obama’s commitment to Mississippi’s recovery is demonstrated by his tireless work to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and improve coordination among federal agencies and local partners who have too-often failed to collaborate in the past four years. As a result, public assistance projects that had been stuck for years have moved forward since the start of the Administration.It's one thing for President Obama to skip Mississippi, the place where Hurricane Katrina hit, and visit New Orleans, the place where levees failed and flooded the city; but, it's another thing entirely, to take credit for our recovery, the bulk of which belongs to the "local partners" the White House says "have too-often failed to collaborate" with the feds. We still have a lot of recovery to do, and Mississippi appreciates assistance from the federal government - both Democrat and Republican. But of all the people who want to take credit for what has been done, President Obama should not be pushing to the front of the line.
Here’s an item of interest for any adult who worked as a teenager, or for any teenager who’s trying to find a part-time job: The Associated Press is reporting that $1.2 billion in stimulus money spent to help teens find jobs this summer failed miserably.We should say so. As we blogged earlier this month:
The teenage unemployment rate is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 1948.Unemployment. Yes we can.
When protesters from the left — environmentalists, labor unions, the pro-choice lobby, civil rights advocates, health care reform advocates, anti-war activists, you name it — take to the streets, disrupt speeches or public meetings or shout down speakers, it's hailed as political activism and noble expressions of dissent. Most of the time, those protests are cloaked in the most noble of terms: "Speaking truth to power."We have the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives - the Speaker of the House and the Democratic Majority Leader - calling dissent "Un-American" in a guest column in a national newspaper.
But when protesters from the right — TEA party organizers, the pro-life lobby, gun owners, veterans groups, fiscal conservatives, capitalists, free marketers and anti-immigration groups — take to the streets, disrupt speeches, or shout down speakers, they are tarred by the federal government as right-wing extremists and it is suggested that their ideas are subversive in nature.
Moveon.org is billed as "Democracy in action."
But the National Taxpayers Union and similar organizations are part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy."
It's disingenuous in the extreme for the Obama administration to complain about organized opposition to some of his initiatives — not while the administration itself is a well-oiled public relations machine churning out an electronic torrent of e-mails, tweets and other digital information designed to sway the public toward supporting its goals or opposing those who questions them.
"The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it," Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.What would our Founding Fathers think?
"There's also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can't try to rewrite history by pretending it didn't receive anything," he said.
"If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute."
Napolitano was referring to the Privacy Act of 1974, which was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday. The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000. This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.
His detailed campaign plan stated that his proposed improvement in health insurance and health technology "is more than covered" by raising taxes on the wealthy alone. It was not based on raising the tobacco tax.
There is just one page in the Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid instruction manual for running the government.
It reads like this:
Step 1: Spend
Step 2: Tax
Step 3: Borrow
Step 4: Repeat Steps 1 through 3
In the first 50 days of the Obama Administration, the Pelosi-Reid Democrat-controlled Congress voted for $1.2 trillion in new government spending.
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had the best take on the Democrats' runaway spending, "To put that in perspective, that's about $24 billion a day, or about $1 billion an hour -- most of it borrowed."
And exactly how do the liberal Democrats propose to pay for all this new spending? Higher taxes and borrowing, of course.
Obama's budget proposal calls for a massive tax increase of $1.4 trillion and at least $646 billion in new energy taxes that will be paid by every American family as companies pass on the cost to consumers.
Since tax hikes won't cover the entire cost of this boondoggle, our government will have to borrow more from foreign governments and creditors. This will lead to our national debt tripling over the next ten years to $23.1 trillion and gives our foreign creditors like China a greater say in the America we leave for our children and grandchildren.
“I don’t like it…change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did.”Thanks to Mississippi Congress Blog for this response.
“That’s what George Bush did very well. Apparently that’s what President Obama is doing.”
As a member of the Armed Service Committee, Taylor noted the budget only gives the Defense Department a “small increase,” which he said would barely cover the cost of living adjustments for the military.
Taylor pointed to President Obama’s inaugural address that called for Americans to make sacrifices, saying “It’s certainly not reflected in his budget.”
