In Decemeber, a government report showed that the government is spending almost $170 a day per household on those who are under the federal poverty line and receiving welfare. That’s $1,190.00 per week or almost $62,000 per year that was taken from someone more likely to invest in and build the economy.

In 2012, welfare paid better than a minimum wage job in 40 states. It’s not surprising then that 4.3 million Americans are on the program. Tack on other government programs and it gets easy to see why someone would rather stay home and on the dole than to start making a better life for themselves by taking a minimum wage job and working up to a better wage. 20% of all recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children have been on the program for more than five years. That is not a hand up, that is a handout.

To add insult to injury, nine states pay their welfare beneficiaries more than the national average for a teacher. Seven states pay more than $12/hr in welfare benefits. The top 10 benefit paying states average $13.68/hour wage equivalent. Why work?

Unfortunately for those that choose the easy early path, there is no way to climb out of poverty. Welfare recipients can’t get promoted or ask for a raise and eventually get above that line. Learning a trade or skill might start out at a lower hourly wage, but the more improved the worker, the more opportunities that present themselves and that will bring them out of poverty.

In 2011, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that there were more than 80 over-lapped government assistance programs spending roughly $1 trillion dollars to aid the poor – the single largest budget item in 2011. That’s what the President said we needed to spend on Health Care for every single American. More than we spend on

If the huge expansion in social welfare programs were working, poverty would be dropping and more would be returning to work. Instead, we have the largest spike in those under the federal poverty line since the 1960′s and an economy that struggling under the weight of redistributive change, handouts and government over-regulation.

Remember Julia from the Obama campaign? Well, apparently, Julia as a single mom, is best off letting the government take care of both her and her children. You can read more at Senator Rand Paul’s website or at the Washington Times.

Watch this clip and be appalled. It is understandably hard convincing people to work to improve their economic situation when they are already getting so much just by having children, being alive and breathing air.

It’s easy to vote for higher taxes when you’re not paying.

Michael Kinsley described a “gaffe” as anytime a politician is caught telling the truth. This is particularly accurate for Republicans and conservatives as is demonstrated by the reaction to Mitt Romney’s comment regarding Obama’s base.

The setting was unfortunate — a $50,000–a–plate fundraiser — but the message was accurate. As he discussed campaign strategy — not governing philosophy — Romney explained: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it… And the government should give it to them…

“Our message of low taxes doesn’t connect…so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the five to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful…”

Romney neglected to mention another solid portion of the Obama base: the welfare–industrial complex composed of government workers and associated special interest groups. The simple fact is the more people receiving government handouts, the more government employees you need to distribute the geetus.

The size of the two populations increases in lockstep as does the size of the Obama base. There is no exit strategy for the War on Poverty.

And this is nothing new, as Ann Coulter pointed out, “Democrats’ problem with welfare reform always was that if it worked, we would need fewer of these well-pensioned public employees, a fact repeatedly acknowledged by liberals themselves.”

Democrat “compassion” for the poor and underprivileged always comes with a healthy dose of self–interest. Just like any attack on Republicans while defending welfare programs is done with elections in mind. They know a reduction in dependency threatens to result in a reduction in Democrats.

Why do you think the Obama administration imitates Tupperware and throws food stamp parties to urge people to apply for handouts? Why did the number of able–bodied participants in the food stamp program double after Obama suspended the work requirement? Why do a record 8.8 million Americans collect disability checks? Why do federal unemployment checks continue for almost two years? And why is the Obama administration spending a record 15.4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on direct cash payments to individuals?

The answer is simple: Obama’s building his base. That’s why Democrats at their national convention had no problem with an Orwellian video that proclaimed, “Government is the only thing that we all belong to.”

Realizing this 47 percent voting block constitutes a problem isn’t a targeting decision made inside the Romney campaign. It’s an issue with the potential to rend the social fabric of the nation. It is a serious enough problem to offer Democrats a trade.

Conservatives agree to abandon photo ID requirements for voting if in return Democrats agree any citizen who is dependent on the federal government for his livelihood is not eligible to vote. This important reform would not mean a permanent loss of voting privileges and the creation of lifelong second–class citizens. On the contrary, as soon as the dependent citizen re–establishes financial independence the individual regains his vote. Regaining his vote acts as an incentive for personal responsibility.

When 47 percent of the populace is dependent on government benefits the nation is fast approaching a tipping point. Once the number passes 50 percent, American society will no longer have a crucial element of shared sacrifice. Instead the dependency block gets to vote for their share of increased benefits and taxpayers make the sacrifice. Even Democrats should be able to recognize that situation is unfair and inequitable.

For example, are McDonald’s customers allowed to set the price of a Big Mac? Do employees of Government Motors vote to set their own salaries? Do football teams get to vote on how many points the opposing defense will surrender?

There already exists a precedent for temporarily relinquishing the vote. Judges, Congressmen and even members of the city council are not supposed to vote or rule on matters in which they have a financial interest.

Naturally government employees would retain voting privileges. As would Social Security recipients, simply because seniors have been told since the program’s inception the money is not welfare. It’s not true now and it was a lie in 1935, but I’m not prepared to penalize seniors because the government misled them.

This reform would leave us with an electorate that bears the responsibility of paying for the government it advocates. Without this reform the Obamatrons continue to benefit unfairly from Taxation Without Participation.

In November one might cynically term Obama’s 47 percent “pocketbook voters,” only the pocketbook they’ll be voting is yours.

The war on poverty has been a big success for the bureaucracy. At the federal level alone there are now 126 separate anti-poverty programs administered by seven different cabinet agencies and six independent agencies. On June, 2011, the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the issue of “Duplication, Overlap, and Inefficiencies in Federal Welfare Programs.” General Accountability Office (GAO) Chief Operating Officer Patricia A. Dalton said:

… that the GAO could not identify all existing welfare programs in the various federal departments and agencies or determine how much they cost. She said further that she and the GAO could not give a specific number of welfare programs or even “hazard a guess” as to what percentage of those programs are actually accomplishing the purposes for which they were created.

Tanner stated that welfare spending increased under Bush, but Obama has thrown money at anti-poverty programs at an unprecedented rate. Since taking office, the Obama administration has increased spending on welfare programs by more than $193 billion. “The vast majority of current programs,” Tanner state, “are focused on making poverty more comfortable – giving poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty. The best way to create wealth is not through government action, but through the power of the free market.”

But Johnson couldn’t leave well enough alone. In the name of “equal outcome,” he declared war on poverty and created the welfare system. On June 4, 1965, at a Howard University commencement address, Johnson expressed his support for equal outcomes policies directed at Black Americans. He linked economic rights with civil rights and equality of outcome with equality of opportunity.  [emphasis mine]  Johnson said, “It is not enough to open the gates of opportunity; all our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”  [again, emphasis mine]  That comment led to race- and gender-based quotas and preferences, what we now refer to as affirmative action.

Now let’s turn our attention to equal opportunity. I was a rather slow and mediocre race car driver. My only claim to fame (such as it is) is that Bobby Allison once lapped me in a 5 lap race! But I had the same opportunities as Bobby Allison, and that is the point of this diatribe. I had the same access, the same equal opportunity, as Allison to money, cars, and sponsors. The fact that I didn’t have Allison’s talent for driving race cars was a personal impediment.

Yet had the same logic that Johnson used in 1964-5, I could have/would have been competitive with Allison, not by making me faster, but by making Allison slower and making him wait for me.

Failing to reach one’s goal (in my case, driving fast) would clarify the meaning of the words “access” and “opportunity.” But clarification would destroy the political usefulness of these words, along with the government programs that are used to justify them. No politician asks how access was denied. Politicians don’t stop to define words, suggesting that external barriers are the problem. and that government intervention is the only solution. “Equal access” does not automatically lead to “equal outcomes” in racing or anywhere else. But words like “equal access” have led to much political success.

Kurt Vonnegut, in 1961, wrote about equality of outcomes in Harrison Bergeron, and about Harrison’s ultimate rebellion against forced equality of outcomes. He was shot.

I think it’s fairly clear that after transferring $15 trillion to the poor that the concept of “equal outcome” has not, nor will it ever work. All we can do is ensure “equal opportunity,” then let the cards fall where they may.

But that’s just my opinion.

Please visit RWNO, my personal web site.

Much has been said about the problems of Greece and how those problems will impact the Eurozone. However, the size of Spain’s economy is over four times that of Greece’s. Spain’s 11.5% share of the Euro zone’s GDP has a far greater impact on European finances than does Greece’s 2.5%.

What the world is witnessing is the collapse of the European socialist economic model; the failure of government dependency. As more people become dependent on government, fewer people are left to pay the cost.

But it goes beyond simply spending other people’s money. The socialist entitlement mentality makes people less productive. As more and more people become less and less productive, an ever-smaller minority of productive people become responsible for shouldering the burdens of a completely lopsided, unfair system. When a tiny number of productive people are required to deprive themselves of the fruits of their own labor in order to finance the lives of the remaining population, where is the incentive for them to produce?

If that is not enough, reliance on a big government nanny state makes people less responsible for themselves, less self-reliant. That is the antithesis of the American way of life.

When European settlers colonized the New World, they left the security of Europe behind in favor of North America’s unknown wilderness. They left homes, family, friends and country behind in exchange for an opportunity to build better lives for themselves. They were freed from the constraints of Europe’s restrictive class system. They openly rejected the European way by leaving.

When the British Monarchy deemed to re-impose that system on Britain’s thirteen North American Colonies, that attempt was adamantly and thoroughly rejected. Hence the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution and the founding of the United States of America.

When America’s pioneers ventured west to traverse the Great Plains and cross the Rocky Mountains they were completely self reliant. They took care of themselves. They didn’t have, want, or need a big nanny state government to take care of them from cradle to grave.

This is the stuff of which America is made.

Because it gives them control over “the masses”, “progressives” have long sought to fashion America after the European socialist model, to make Americans more government dependent. There was FDR with the New Deal and Social Security. LBJ gave America the Great Society, Welfare Programs and Medicare. Now obama forces upon an unwilling America the crown jewel of European style socialism; government controlled medicine.

Every time obama holds a press conference he sounds exactly the way he has always sounded: he inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. his policies are working, but need more time. Congress needs to quit stalling and enact more of his policies. The private sector is doing fine but to grow the economy government needs to spend more money to create more government jobs at the state and local level.

Coming as it does on the heels of the Wisconsin recall election, where such policies were rejected, this shows precisely how out of touch obama is with the private sector, how the economy works, American history and the nature of America’s people…and with reality.

Europe won’t work in America. Neither will an out of touch narcissist who insists on imposing a long rejected European system upon America.

obama, you are fired.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/europe-wont-work-in-america/

In this episode of the Married to the game, we discuss:

-Why Mitt Romney’s supporters should thank Newt.

-Why sex offenders should volunteer to remove themselves from society.  (self deportation)

-Where have the entrepreneurs gone?

-Can we make people “work” for their welfare?

-Why does Day Care cost SO MUCH???

-Have we reached a point where government regulation is killing our small businesses?

-What is America going to look like, if ONLY the irresponsible people continue to reproduce/have children?

-What if YouTube made you have to join an Actor’s Union to create and post videos?

-What did Michelle Ray do to risk Social Services being called on her?

CLICK HERE NOW to listen to the lengthy, yet fresh discussion.

The Big Oil subsidy outcry is just another ploy by the American left to bash the very fossil fuel that has been the main producer of affordable energy in America ever since the invention of the various versions of electricity generators and the subsequent evolution of the energy industry. As with any production company, the free market energy system is based on competition-driven cost controls, where affordability is job one. Allow big government to completely control the energy industry and the results will be higher prices for everyone who can afford to pay, while also using it as a tool for stealth wealth redistribution and vote-buying to stay in power. Now that the big government myth about the big oil companies not paying their fair share has been busted wide open, and some of the reasons behind that power grab have been theorized, let’s take a look at one of the biggest energy subsidies ever handed out by the U.S. Government. Personal, welfare-dependence-driven energy subsidies that cost U.S taxpayers billions of dollars every year.

In a democratic society, fairness, and equality are supposed to be the cornerstone of the system. When certain groups or sectors of society are given preference over another one by a government through the usage of tax dollars, this becomes a blatant example of taxation without representation. ( of ALL people not just some of them) Other words that may be used to describe this scenario may include Fascism, tyranny, socialism, and political oppression.  So how can big government manipulators explain why one sector of American society has to pay for their utility usage, while another very large sector receives a personal energy subsidy from the U.S. Government that the rest of society is made to pay for?

While the oil companies “subsidies,” which are in fact tax breaks, have been put at around $4 billion dollars a year, how much do the personal energy subsidies cost the taxpayer each year?   All states have their own personal energy subsidy programs, which are at least partly funded by federal tax dollars. The website Welfare Info is a good place to explore the current welfare system, and just what government “subsidies” the career welfare class receives.

[Note: There is a big difference between an American tax-paying, energy producing company getting legal tax breaks (unjustly termed "subsidies" by the leftists and enviro-terrorists) and a non-producing, non-taxpaying career welfare sector receiving personal energy subsidies to pay their utility bills at the expense of the working class in America.]

From the above welfare info site, the following personal energy subsidies are outlined as follows: (emphasis added)

Another of the welfare programs is the energy or utility assistance program which is intended to help those who cannot afford to pay for basic utility needs, such as heat, electricity and/or gas and water. Like the child support program, it will supplement part of or provide 100% of the monthly utility costs.

Although the state by state personal energy subsidy programs are unique, they all contain on commonality: One sector of American society is being made to pay for another sector’s energy bills through government programs, many of them consisting of utility companies forming “partnership programs” with state and local governments. So who qualifies for  these taxpayer-funded personal energy subsidies? Can a non-U.S. citizen have their utility bill paid by U.S. taxpayers, or receive other welfare payments ?

Again from Welfare Info: (emphasis added) “You must be a citizen of the United States or a qualified non-citizen legal resident, (restrictions apply).” So, not only are U.S. taxpayers being made to subsidize career welfare people’s personal energy bills, they are also being made to subsidize what amounts to payments to criminal illegal aliens who broke the law while entering the United States.

Again, how much do these personal energy subsidies cost the U.S. taxpayer?  The fact is, that the big government bureaucracy now has so many personal energy subsidy programs that it is all but impossible to put a total cost to the taxpayers on it, which appears to be have done by design over decades of nanny-state planning and dependency program creation. Utibility Bill Assistance  has a complete rundown of state by state personal energy subsidy programs, along with this explanation about another pair of federal personal energy subsidy programs:

There is also a federal program to provide utility bill assistance. The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association is a primary educational & policy organization for the state and other organizations of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which is often referred to as LIHEAP. LIHEAP is a federal government program that provides grants to states to help struggling with assistance on their their electric, heating and cooling utility bills.

In addition to LIHEAP, another program available is the weatherization program, which over 5 million Americans have taking advantage of, and which can save over $300 per year in utility bill costs. ( several spelling corrections made)

When discussing taxpayer-funded “subsidies” and entitlement programs, the Liberal nanny-state worshipers have proven incapable of seperating retired, career-taxpaying Senior citizens receiving SSI payments ( and in some cases personal energy subsidies) from the non-producing, non-taxpaying career welfare sector of society. This is done to obscure the facts that tax dollars have been used to create a welfare dependency in America in exchange for the welfare class vote, which is the base of today’s Liberal Democratic party. Liberal political operatives disgustingly disrespect working-class Seniors by lumping them in with the non-producing welfare class, in an attempt to falsely paint themselves as champions of the poor.

In summary, should America end all energy subsidies, as Democrats have been demanding in Congress recently? That would have to include ending the above-explained personal energy subsidies, along with the Democrat-sponsored green energy fraud and power-mongering usage of taxpayer dollars to spread misinformation designed to keep them in power by enriching their crony-capitalists and tax dollar thieves as was seen in the Solyndra scandal.  To end all energy subsidies would in fact crush the base of today’s fake Democrats, their environmental green energy fear-mongering, and their welfare-dependent vote begging fraud they have hoisted upon the American people under the guise of “helping them.”

Footnote: While several personal energy subsidy programs do indeed help deserving people cope with today’s skyrocketing energy prices, as Barack Obama promised America during his 2008 election campaign, the creation of the welfare class dependency in America has deteriorated family values, work ethics and the very foundation of American exceptional-ism, personal responsibility and the idea of working for what you want out of life. For a very serious look at some of the results of this systemic destruction of American values, please see The Ugly truth of America’s Welfare Class.

As a conservative audience, I can see the temptation to jump on Beckel’s quote and exploit it for all it’s worth.  Here we have a Liberal stating point blank that their policies have not only failed, but he’s implying that damage has been done to society.  It’s a pretty damning and powerful statement.

Judging by the reaction I got when I shared this quote on Twitter, there is much to exploit in the video, but… I think there is another powerful statement when you consider the full context of things.  Try, if you can, to imagine this being said on any other network.  You definitely would not have a Liberal admit something like this on MSNBC.  And even a milquetoast network like CNN wouldn’t dare to make such a proclamation.  You only get lucid moments like this on Fox News, and it’s sad.  And I have to say “lucid moments”, because it’s not like Fox is that much above the fray.  They have plenty of partisan reporting on their part too.  It’s just that every now and then, someone has the courage or the ability to speak truthfully, and for that I thank them.

Bob definitely gave the Right Wing something to crow about with this quote, but I also think he gave us, as Americans, something to think about:  If we’re ever going to actually solve some of the problems in this nation, we’re going to have to admit the instances where our side is wrong.

There have been some in Congress, along with the “tax the rich more” crowd, who have suggested a Value Added Tax or VAT. This would be a national sales tax added on to the cost of everything we buy today. This tax, proposed to begin at about 2%, would eventually be up in the 16% or higher range as it is now in some European countries. THE FAIRTAX IS NOT THE SAME PLAN. Those who do not want to see the FairTax implemented deliberately confuse the two plans to scare people like me, and you, away from the FairTax. This worked for quite some time as I was not knowledgeable enough to discern the difference. Be assured that when you hear VAT used in the same sentence as the FairTax it is a red herring designed to put you off the most intelligent proposal I have heard in my 61 years, The FairTax.
Now to the costs associated with our current system. In the debate about income and employment taxes we seldom hear of the costs involved. I am a simple man with a high school education so it doesn’t take very long for the tax structure to get the best of me. I haven’t been able to find any concrete numbers but the federal income tax code has somewhere between 67,000 pages, as stated in the 2nd FairTax book published in 2008, and 86,000 that I heard a politician mention a little while back. I can’t remember which politician or exactly when he gave that number but I do remember 86,000 pages being mentioned. I really don’t care which number is right, both are absurd. My wife has a college degree in accounting in which she achieved a 4.0 grade point average. She is a very smart lady and extremely good with accounting but even she can’t keep up with yearly changes and the odd nuances of the ever changing tax codes. As a result we have our taxes done by a local Certified Public Accountant who is very good and keeps up with all of the changes from year to year.Let me describe the differences very simply here before I go on to the main subject of this article. The FairTax is instead of, not in addition to, income taxes, employment (Social Security/Medicare) taxes, inheritance (death) taxes, gift taxes, etc. The Value Added Tax (VAT) is in addition to, not instead of, these other taxes. This is a huge difference when it comes to deciding whether to support the FairTax or not. Once I understood the difference in the two plans I could plainly see that the FairTax is a plan that is in my best financial interest.

This year, 2011, the IRS has a $12.633 billion budget. That is $12,633,000,000 of our money going to an agency to insure that everyone, well almost everyone, complies with the tax codes. Even with that amount of money being spent they won’t get all of the money “due” to the government in taxes. The IRS is not the most efficient tax collection system. They can find me if I don’t pay but they have a hard time finding out if members of Congress, congressional staff members, and even the head man at the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner paid their taxes as they should. As I mentioned in the first segment, they won’t collect these taxes from the local drug dealer, prostitute, illegal alien, or anyone else who gets paid under the table for work.
Now let’s talk about the cost to We the People directly. The last figures I could find on the cost to prepare income taxes were from 2005. That year the U. S. General Accountability Office reported that taxpayers paid between $240 billion and $600 billion to prepare and file their tax forms. That is for 2005, 6 years ago. My costs have almost doubled since then to the $315 my wife and I paid to have our taxes prepared in 2010.

So, let’s take a quick look at what we have for the cost of compliance. The IRS alone will spend $12.633 billion in 2011, at least, to insure that some of us pay our taxes. Those of us who pay our taxes spend as much as $600 billion, at least as of 2005, to have those forms prepared. The GAO also stated that taxpayers can expect to pay as much as 20% of the cost of their taxes to have the forms prepared by professional tax preparers. That is another 20% in addition to the amount of the taxes owed (ours isn’t that high). The figures in this paragraph come from the IRS site itself, not the FairTax book. I guess these numbers are great if you are a CPA or tax lawyer but not so great for those of us who have to spend that money.

For those who say “so what, I don’t pay much in taxes and the rich can afford to pay more” I have a new perspective for you. Every dollar that is spent to prepare tax forms or taken by government is a dollar that those “rich people” can’t use to provide jobs for working class people like myself, or you. Also look at the downstream effects. Corporations and the “rich” who own businesses factor their tax liability into the prices they charge for their products and the wages they pay their employees. One way or the other we all pay for the taxes that are heaped upon those we consider “rich”, and those “evil corporations”. People who own businesses own them to make money for themselves to support their families primarily. They are going to make money regardless of how much they are taxed, or they are going to go out of business and let their employees fend for themselves in the employment lines. When they pass those expenses on to the customer it comes to the point that customers pay the taxes in the end through the cost of the product. The bottom line is that corporations don’t pay taxes, the customer pays the taxes. The corporation just becomes the tax collector for the federal government because that money goes straight to bureaucrats and politicians.

The economists who have studied the tax structure and developed the Fair Tax plan have determined that there is a 22% tax liability built into everything you purchase, above and beyond state and local sales taxes. This is where things get a bit complicated and are difficult to comprehend. For example, let me use the wagon we bought for one of our grandchildren last fall. We paid $99, not including sales taxes, for a small wagon with wood sides. These wood sides were barely stronger than balsa wood, not the hardiest or strongest of woods. That may or may not sound like a lot of money but let me delve into how the price of that wagon was arrived at.

The wagon is made of metal, with rubber tires and wood siding. Each of these materials has a manufacturing process. The ore for the metal has to be mined, processed into steel, stamped into shape, painted, packaged, and shipped to its final destination, the store where we purchased the product. The wood for the sides and the rubber for the tires go through this same process. At each step of the process taxes are assessed for the materials and labor needed to complete the process and those costs are included in the final price of the product. By the time we purchased that wagon, $22 of the cost were the built-in taxes added to the cost of producing that product. This includes evaluating the tax costs of those who provide the machinery that makes the wagon. So I pay roughly 32% of my income to the government and then pay another 22% in federal taxes, not counting state and local sales taxes, to purchase the wagon for my granddaughter. So we have a wagon I could have bought for $77 now costing $99.

Take out your latest pay stub and look at it. Look at the Gross Pay box, and then look at the Net Pay box. Now go back and look at the various deductions, federal income tax, social security/Medicare tax, miscellaneous federal taxes, and see how much they take from your paycheck each time you get paid. Quite an amount going to Congress to waste on themselves isn’t it? (The FairTax stops the 32% I pay on my income but doesn’t raise the 22% I pay for the wagon.)

If you will stop and think about it for a moment the current system is a can of worms that is so ungainly and complicated even those who write the tax codes can’t comply. Don’t believe me? Do some research on Rep. Charles Rangel (D- NY), the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives. They write the tax laws and he just got pinched, or hand slapped to be more accurate, for evading millions in taxes. He claims he didn’t understand the laws and made a simple error, to the tune of several million dollars. He had the nerve to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and complain about how complicated the tax codes are. Rangel writes those tax codes. You try to make that excuse fly and see if you find yourself with a finger wagged in your face or you join Wesley Snipes in prison for tax evasion.

The FairTax puts a stop to all of this nonsense. No need for the IRS, no need for complicated forms and CPA’s or tax lawyers, and a full paycheck coming to you every payday. How much would it help if the drug dealers were paying a consumption tax on their fancy cars, boats, airplanes, etc? What about the millions of tourists who visit the United States every year? Under the FairTax plan they would be helping pay the taxes that support Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and social welfare systems. Right now almost 50% of American citizens do not pay any income tax at all, not to mention the illegal aliens who use an overly large portion of our “free” services. What if John Kerry had to pay taxes on the $7 million boat I mentioned in the introduction to the series!!!!!!!!

How would you like to get a gross pay check instead of a net pay check? How far would that money go to help you provide for your family? You are paying a 22% tax on everything you buy, food, clothes, a bicycle for your child, a car to get to work in, shoes for your feet, light bulbs, toilet paper, food, everything. Imagine not having to pay the income tax on top of these embedded taxes. And a bonus is that it wouldn’t hurt the “poor” people in our society. Even those paying no income and social security taxes are paying the embedded taxes.
So let me review what we have learned in this installment. We the People are paying millions to have our taxes prepared by professionals because the tax codes are too complicated for us to do it on our own. The IRS will spend billions on auditing and compliance, for those of us who they audit. Those who engage in illegal activity do not pay income and social security taxes while those of us who are honest hard working folks pay through the nose. The “poor” aren’t going to be hurt by this. And best of all, We the People can be rid of the IRS, and take the favoritism and vote buying out of the hands of the politicians. Those who use taxes to increase their power, wealth, and prestige through taxation lose a great deal of that power and give it back to We the People where it belongs in the first place.

In the next installment I will delve into the business and financial aspects of the FairTax, how it would help in bringing business and manufacturing back to our shores from other countries, and why the money being hidden in offshore accounts would be brought back to provide jobs and increased opportunity for American citizens.
I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.

Bob Russell
Claremore, Oklahoma
November 25, 2011

The sad thing is that this woman is just one example of the many in our country who expect that their decisions should come without responsibilities. The way I look at it, if you can’t provide for them, don’t have them!

A couple of years ago I began hearing about a new concept in taxation. This new concept is called The FairTax. I didn’t pay much attention because I thought “how is any tax fair?”, when some pay and  some don’t. At first I dismissed it as another scam to throw me off the track of an out of control government looking for another way to hoodwink me into paying more of my hard earned money into their grand spending plans.

I have long since grown tired of paying so much of my money into ever growing but useless government programs that pay people to sit on their butts and spend my money. Welfare expenses keep going up as more and more people find ways to game the system by having babies, faking injuries, working for cash under the table, etc. The ultra-rich hide their money in “foundations” or overseas to avoid the taxes I have been paying for 45 years. All of them, rich and poor are getting over on the other working stiffs who are too stupid, too honest, or unwilling, to do these things. These money pits keep growing as the amount of available income to tax drops.

One of my pet peeves with income tax is those who don’t pay any. While I was paying 32% in my working years the local drug dealer was paying nothing. The local prostitutes who hang out on street corners in the bigger cities or work out of high priced hotels were paying nothing. The welfare cheats who sit around finding ways to game the system for their own benefit have no intention of doing anything to benefit society, or themselves for that matter. The illegal aliens who were working for cash were paying nothing. I had noticed the illegal aliens especially. They were everywhere and driving much nicer vehicles than I was, or am now driving (I don’t hang out where the hookers hang out). I was paying a 25% income tax, a 7.5% social security/Medicare tax, plus state taxes, and being told the government couldn’t afford for me to retire while those not paying taxes lived the good life. I struggled, they flourished. That is when The FairTax began to make sense to me.

I heard Neal Boortz one day talking about this new plan on his radio show. I listened with interest and thought it sounded good but never really did any more to learn about The FairTax. In the last election cycle, the 2010 mid-terms, I kept bumping into Carol Chouinard and she kept handing me literature about The Fair Tax. I took the information and looked it over without really spending a lot of time educating myself on this new concept. Interesting but, ehhhh!!!!

One day I was going through a stack of papers that had accumulated over a few months, actually several months, and found the literature Carol had given me. As I read through the brochures and leaflets I began to realize that this was not the run of the mill scam to get more of my money. This was an idea that made sense to me once I really looked at it.

Carol is the local guru on The FairTax. She lives in Rogers County, 2nd Congressional District, State of Oklahoma. She travels throughout Eastern Oklahoma, or anywhere else for that matter, presenting The FairTax to any group or person who will give her a chance to enlighten them. I ran into her again the other night and we got to talking about political issues and The FairTax came up. Well, I was complaining about the current debt ceiling debacle and how to deal with it. Carol began to explain some more about how The FairTax was the answer to much of the problem.

As I listened to her a light bulb came on in my head, and the squirrel began to spin the cylinder. The things I had read came back to me and began to make sense. I began to remember about the way our tax system keeps hard working honest people in bondage while those who don’t mind cheating skate by without paying anything, only taking from those of us who do things the right way. Carol gave me a book about The FairTax. It is the second book called FairTax: The Truth. The first book, The FairTax, came out in 2005. This book was published in 2008 so is 3 years old as I start this article. Much of the information I will include in future articles about The FairTax will come from updates from the FairTax web site as I want to give you the most up-to-date information and statistics available.

One solution I see to our fiscal problems in this plan is the title, The FairTax. From everything I have read and the research I am doing, this plan solves many of the financial problems we face as a nation, the issue of money paid in taxes. I find that this plan is aptly named. I often hear Democrat and sometimes Republican politicians, especially those in Washington, cry about how “the rich” get over by not paying enough taxes. Yeah, like the politicians pay “their fair share”. Remember the hullaballoo a few months ago about Senator John Kerry, the one who parked his multi-million dollar yacht, $7 million yacht to be exact, on the far side of the bay because the state taxes on that yacht were cheaper there than on his side of the inlet? $500,000 per year cheaper to be exact. So much for Washington’s multi-millionaire insiders being concerned about paying their fair share of taxes. Hmm, I wonder where I am going to park my $7 million yacht. Oh, never mind, I don’t have one.

I also hear many “poor” people make the same statements, “the rich need to pay more taxes”. The problem with the “poor” complainers is that most of the ones I know don’t pay any taxes at all either. Most of the “the rich need to pay more taxes” crowd, at least the ones I know personally, are on the dole. They are drawing welfare, food stamps, social security disability, state aid, etc. Many of them either don’t work at all or work part time. They pay nothing and spend much of their time complaining that they don’t “get enough help from the government”. They have cell phones for themselves and their children, several have big flat screen HD televisions, complete with the latest game consoles, cable TV service, cigarettes, and are usually well stocked with beer in the fridge. Actually, I need the “rich” people to continue to be “rich”. They are the ones who will hire me, hopefully, so I can make a little money. Poor people never seem to hire me for anything.

In the spirit of “transparency”, my wife and I both have cell phones, we have cable TV service, and one 37 inch flat screen HD television set. Before you say “AHAH!!!” let me offer a caveat to this. We don’t get any help from the government and are not exactly in the “rich folks” category. I am retired but not old enough to draw social security, my wife works a full time job, and we have a small Mom & Pop business that gives me a little work and usually provides us very little in the way of profit. As a matter of fact, if the business doesn’t make a profit in 2011 we are going to have to shut it down. I work part time for a friend when he needs help on a project but the rest of the time I spend working on and around the house. We have a 1976 Chevy pickup that my father-in-law gave to us when he became unable to drive. We have a 1995 Ford Escort that my mother-in-law gave to us when she became unable to drive. We also have a 2004 Dodge PT Cruiser with over 100,000 miles on it (it was a demonstrator model). We don’t owe any money on our cars, and live in a 101 year old house with a $60,000 mortgage. Not exactly Beverly Hills here, closer to Green Acres, but we don’t get any government assistance either.

To get back to the point of this article, our nation cannot keep going the way it is financially. We cannot continue to borrow and spend, drive businesses out of the country, and raise taxes on the “rich”, those making $250,000 per year or so, the small to medium businessman/family who provide the bulk of the jobs in this nation. We have to do something to bring the jobs back to the United States. We need to make it feasible for those who hide their money to use that money to provide jobs so those who desire to work but can’t find a decent job can get back to work. Giving people unlimited unemployment pay is not the answer to prosperity, it is a handout not a hand up. Many of those drawing that unemployment would work if they could find a job. Some of them are lazy bums that are looking for a handout but most, and I do mean MOST, are honest hard working people who just want to provide for their families.

The FairTax is a method to accomplish this task of financial recovery and prosperity. In the next installment of this series I intend to delve into how our current tax structure is designed to inhibit rather than enhance prosperity. I will cover the costs of enforcing and complying with the current tax code and how it affects every person in America, tax payer and non-taxpayer. The FairTax books are a treasure trove of information about how our financial system works, or doesn’t work, and what We the People can do if we will stand up and demand that the politicians change the way they do things. Other installments will cover more aspects of The FairTax plan and how we go about getting it implemented by politicians that are more concerned about themselves than We the People. Elections are only 11 months away, so let’s get to work changing our future. God Bless America!

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.

Bob Russell
Claremore, Oklahoma
November 25, 2011

I first read it in an email that was forwarded to me by our staff cartoonist, the ever talented A.F. Branco, and it is just too good not to share!  The email asked if I would have the guts to pass it on. I’ll do more than forward it to a few friends, I’ll share it with ALL THE WORLD to see!

This 21-year-old lady understands things more than most people 2 or 3 times older than she is!  She sees her future crumbling in front of her, and she sees the solutions as nothing but common sense. I would have to say I most definitely agree with her! There is not a single thing that I disagree with her on! If she ever runs for office, I will DEFINITELY vote for her!

 Put me in charge . . .

Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your ”home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government”  job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good”.

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND while you are on Government subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Government welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Federal Judge Mary Scriven imposed the temporary ban basically because, in her ruling, she said that the court needs time to determine if the law violates the Constitutional ban on unreasonable search and seizure. Is this some kind of perverted joke? I ask this because I just read an article where the TSA is in fact illegally stopping motorists and searching their cars in a new program DHS likes to call VIPR. 2012 GOP Presidential candidate and current Texas Congressman Ron Paul went on the record stating his objections to the latest set of DHS laws rules in an op-ed from tennesseenewspress.com titled, TSA Releases VIPR Venom on Tennessee Highways .

If you thought the “Transportation Security Administration” would limit itself to conducting unconstitutional searches at airports, think again. The agency intends to assert jurisdiction over our nation’s highways, waterways, and railroads as well. TSA launched a new campaign of random checkpoints on Tennessee highways last week, complete with a sinister military-style acronym–VIP(E)R—as a name for the program.

Here[once again] we see a Federal Judge intervening with Florida State law to protect welfare recipients from the [supposedly] illegal search and seizure of a drug test that was enacted simply to ensure the working taxpayers are not funding welfare recipient’s drug habits. Meanwhile, the TSA can fondle citizens private parts at the airport and stop citizens and search their vehicles on any highway in the U.S. with no valid reason.  Ron Paul summed up the new TSA VIPR program pretty well at the end of his op-ed:

Disarming the highways and filling them full of jack-booted thugs demanding to see our papers is no way to make them safer. Instead, it is a great way to expand government surveillance powers and tighten the noose around our liberties. (emphasis mine)

 

For those of you naive enough to think Florida welfare recipients are not using illegal drugs, I point to the following facts of the past few months when the law was being enforced: Since the law went into effect in mid-July, over 7,000 applicants have taken and passed the drug test, 32 took the test and failed and approximately 1,600 have refused to the test.  Applicants do not have to say why they refused, but their refusal will block them from receiving the government benefits.  If you are caught operating a motor vehicle in most states while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and refuse to take the sobriety test or submit to a blood test, your drivers license is automatically suspended. Of course, the government makes a huge profit in fines and DUI school in order for you to get your license back,( from the actual working class citizens) while the welfare class doesn’t have any earned money to take from them. ( nor are they paying their fair share in taxes)  If a person was in need of real help in the form of a welfare cash payment in Florida, they simply would have no problem proving that the cash would go towards food or shelter and not dope. Unless of course they are already on dope, and can’t hold down a steady job because of it, therefore they demand that other people support them and their habit. This is the very definitive crux of this problem.

The champion of the welfare class, the ACLU started this whole disgusting federal intervention into Florida’s right to drug test welfare recipients by filing the lawsuit in the first place. Isn’t it weird beyond comprehension on how the ACLU can sit by and allow the TSA to unconstitutionally stick their hands down American citizen’s pants at the airport and also approve of the TSA jack-booted thugs use of the VIPR  illegal automobile searches of American citizens simply traveling from one town to another? Actually, it all doesn’t seem too strange when we consider the idea that the ACLU and the DHS and the TSA are obviously doing the Obama administration’s bidding today.

 Here is serious a tip for our readers :  When traveling across state lines or any other time when in your vehicle, be sure to follow all local, state and federal laws about carrying your second amendment allowed guns with you in your car. What better way for the anti-gun Liberal jack-booted thugs from the TSA to start taking away your right to bear arms through the illegal searches being conducted under the new TSA VIPR program.

2012 just can’t get here fast enough!