30 October, 2008
29 October, 2008
Sleight of Hand that isn't so Slight
22 October, 2008
Taxes
Obama and the Tax Tipping Point
Obama and the Tax Tipping Point: How Long Before Taxpayers Are Pushed Too Far?, by Adam Lerrick:
What happens when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes? Economists Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard posed this question 27 years ago. We may soon enough know the answer.
Barack Obama is offering voters strong incentives to support higher taxes and bigger government. This could be the magic income-redistribution formula Democrats have long sought.
Sen. Obama is promising $500 and $1,000 gift-wrapped packets of money in the form of refundable tax credits. These will shift the tax demographics to the tipping point where half of all voters will receive a cash windfall from Washington and an overwhelming majority will gain from tax hikes and more government spending.
In 2006, the latest year for which we have Census data, 220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million -- 40% -- paid no income taxes. ... [T]his will jump to 49% when Mr. Obama's cash credits remove 18 million more voters from the tax rolls. What's more, there are an additional 24 million taxpayers (11% of the electorate) who will pay a minimal amount of income taxes -- less than 5% of their income and less than $1,000 annually.
In all, three out of every five voters will pay little or nothing in income taxes under Mr. Obama's plans and gain when taxes rise on the 40% that already pays 95% of income tax revenues.
The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the "very rich" -- the 5% that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60% of the federal income tax bill -- will never stretch to cover the expansive programs Mr. Obama promises.
What next? A core group of Obama enthusiasts -- those educated professionals who applaud the "fairness" of their candidate's tax plans -- will soon see their $100,000-$150,000 incomes targeted. As entitlements expand and a self-interested majority votes, the higher tax brackets will kick in at lower levels down the ladder, all the way to households with a $75,000 income.
I am reminded of the poem by Martin Niemöller:
- [T]hey came first for [those making $250,000], And I didn’t speak up because I [didn't make $250,000];
- And then they came for [those making $150,000], And I didn’t speak up because I [didn't make $150,000];
- And then they came for [those making $100,000], And I didn’t speak up because I [didn't make $100,000];
- And then . . . they came for me [because I made $75,000] . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
13 October, 2008
Taxes and "The Rich"
Larry Elder
Thursday, October 09, 2008
So, what do "the rich" pay in federal income taxes? Nothing, right? That, at least, is what most people think. And Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to raise the top marginal rate for "the rich" -- known in some quarters as "job creators."
A recent poll commissioned by Investor's Business Daily asked, in effect, "What share do you think the rich pay?" Their findings? Most people are completely clueless about the amount the rich actually do pay.
First, the data. The top 5 percent (those making more than $153,542 -- the group whose taxes Obama seeks to raise) pay 60 percent of all federal income taxes. The rich (aka the top 1 percent of income earners, those making more than $388,806 a year), according to the IRS, pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 1 percent's taxes comprise 17 percent of the federal government's revenue from all sources, including corporate taxes, excise taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts.
Now, what do people think the rich pay? The IBD/TIPP poll found that 36 percent of those polled thought the rich contribute 10 percent or less of all federal income taxes. Another 15 percent thought the rich pay between 10 and 20 percent, while another 10 percent thought the rich's share is between 20 and 30 percent. In other words, most people thought the rich pay less -- far less -- than they actually do. Only 12 percent of those polled thought the rich pay more than 40 percent.
Let's try this another way. A U.S. News & World Report blogger went to the Democratic National Convention in Denver and conducted an informal poll of 24 DNC delegates. He asked them, "What should 'the rich' pay in income taxes?" Half the respondents said "25 percent"; 25 percent said "20 percent"; 12 percent said "30 percent"; and another 12 percent said "35 percent." The average DNC delegate wanted the rich to pay 25.6 percent, which is lower than what the rich pay now -- both by share of taxes and by tax rate!
Thirty percent of American voters pay nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- in federal income taxes. And, not too surprisingly, compared with taxpaying voters, they are more likely to support spending that benefits them. The majority of the 30 percent who don't pay federal income taxes agree with Obama's $65 billion plan to institute taxpayer-funded universal health coverage. But the majority of the 70 percent who pay federal income taxes are opposed to Obama's health care plan.
Non-taxpayers support Obama's plans for increased tax deductions for lower-income Americans, along with higher overall tax rates levied against middle- and upper-income households. The majority of non-taxpayers (57 percent) also favor raising the individual income-tax rate for those in the highest bracket from 35 percent to 54 percent. And the majority (59 percent) favors raising Social Security taxes by 4 percent for any individual or business that makes at least $250,000.
Obama calls increasing taxes and giving them to the needy a matter of "neighborliness." Vice presidential running mate Joe Biden calls it a matter of "patriotism."
Yet when it comes to charitable giving, neither Obama (until recently) nor Biden feels sufficiently neighborly or patriotic to donate as much as does the average American household: 2 percent of their adjusted gross income.
Liberal families earn about 6 percent more than conservative families, yet conservative households donate about 30 percent more to charity than do liberal households. And conservatives give more than just to their own churches and other houses of worship. Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, give far more money and donate more of their time to nonreligious charitable causes than do liberals -- especially secular liberals.
In 2007, President George W. Bush and his wife had an adjusted gross income of $923,807. They paid $221,635 in taxes, and donated $165,660 to charity -- or 18 percent of their income. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, in 2007, had a taxable income of $3.04 million. And they paid $602,651 in taxes, and donated $166,547 to charity -- or 5.5 percent of their income.
Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, earned between $200,000 and $300,000 a year between 2000 and 2004, and they donated less than 1 percent to charity. When their income soared to $4.2 million in 2007, their charitable contributions went up to 5 percent.
Joe and Jill Biden, by contrast, made $319,853 and gave $995 to charity in 2007, or 0.3 percent of their income. And that was during the year Biden was running for president. Over the past 10 years, the Bidens earned $2,450,042 and gave $3,690 to charity -- or 0.1 percent of their income.
So let's sum up. The "compassionate" liberals -- at least based on charitable giving -- show less compassion than "hardhearted" conservatives. The rich pay more in income taxes than people think. Voters, clueless about the facts, want the rich to pay still more.
11 October, 2008
Well Done John McCain.
Now the crowd booing him for his efforts, that's pretty shameful...
10 October, 2008
Thank you, Charles
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 10, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.
But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.
McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate.
McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by The New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.
This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.
Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.
Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."
Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers' unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?
No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.
First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?
Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.
Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.
Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers' views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.
Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.
Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.
09 October, 2008
When are we going to address this issue?
NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.
U.S. national debt clock in Times Square, New York.
As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure -- the "1" in $10 trillion.
It's marking the federal government's current debt at about $10.2 trillion.
The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits.
That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.
The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.
08 October, 2008
Economists Overwhelmingly Support Obama's plan.
The article is copied below:
Examining the candidates
Oct 2nd 2008 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
In our special report on the election we analyse the two candidates’ economic plans. Here, we ask professional economists to give us their views
AS THE financial crisis pushes the economy back to the top of voters’ concerns, Barack Obama is starting to open up a clear lead over John McCain in the opinion polls. But among those who study economics for a living, Mr Obama’s lead is much more commanding. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority—at times by overwhelming margins—believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.
Our survey is not, by any means, a scientific poll of all economists. We e-mailed a questionnaire to 683 research associates, all we could track down, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America’s premier association of applied academic economists, though the NBER itself played no role in the survey. A total of 142 responded, of whom 46% identified themselves as Democrats, 10% as Republicans and 44% as neither. This skewed party breakdown may reflect academia’s Democratic tilt, or possibly Democrats’ greater propensity to respond. Still, even if we exclude respondents with a party identification, Mr Obama retains a strong edge—though the McCain campaign should be buoyed by the fact that 530 economists have signed a statement endorsing his plans.
Does their opinion matter? Economics is just one of the many things the next president will have to worry about; voters still seem to prefer Mr McCain on foreign policy. And even on the economy, economists may not have the same priorities as the population at large. Arguably, what a president says about economics on the campaign trail is less important than how he responds to the unexpected challenges that inevitably arise once he is in office.
Yet economists’ opinions should count for something because irrespective of any party affiliation, most of them approach policy decisions with the same basic tool kit. Their assessment of the candidates’ economic credentials and plans represents an informed judgment on how well they will handle difficult trade-offs between efficiency, equity, growth and consensus-building.
Regardless of party affiliation, our respondents generally agree the economy is in bad shape, that the election is important to the course of economic policy and that the housing and financial crisis is the most critical economic issue facing America.
The detailed responses are bad news for Mr McCain (the full data are available here). Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject. “I take McCain’s word on this one,” comments James Harrigan at the University of Virginia, a reference to Mr McCain’s infamous confession that he does not know as much about economics as he should. In fairness, Mr McCain’s lower grade may in part reflect greater candour about his weaknesses. Mr Obama’s more tightly managed image leaves fewer opportunities for such unvarnished introspection.
A candidate’s economic expertise may matter rather less if he surrounds himself with clever advisers. Unfortunately for Mr McCain, 81% of all respondents reckon Mr Obama is more likely to do that; among unaffiliated respondents, 71% say so. That is despite praise across party lines for the excellent Doug Holtz-Eakin, Mr McCain’s most prominent economic adviser and a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. “Although I have tended to vote Republican,” one reply says, “the Democrats have a deep pool of talented, moderate economists.”
There is an apparent contradiction between most economists’ support for free trade, low taxes and less intervention in the market and the low marks many give to Mr McCain, who is generally more supportive of those things than Mr Obama. It probably reflects a perception that the Republican Party under George Bush has subverted many of those ideals for ideology and political gain. Indeed, the majority of respondents rate Mr Bush’s economic record as very bad, and Republican respondents are only slightly less critical.
“John McCain has professed disdain for ‘so-called economists’, and for some the feeling has become mutual,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. “Obama’s team is mainstream and non-ideological but extremely talented.”
On our one-to-five scale, economists on average give Mr Obama’s economic programme a 3.3 and Mr McCain’s a 2.2. Mr Obama, says Jonathan Parker, a non-aligned professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, “is a pragmatist not an ideologue. I expect Clintonian economic policies.” If, that is, crushing federal debt does not derail his taxing and spending plans.
On his plans to fix the financial crisis, Mr Obama averages 3.1, a point higher than Mr McCain. Still, some said they didn’t quite know what they were rating—reasonably enough, since neither candidate has produced clear plans of his own.
Where the candidates’ positions are more clearly articulated, Mr Obama scores better on nearly every issue: promoting fiscal discipline, energy policy, reducing the number of people without health insurance, controlling health-care costs, reforming financial regulation and boosting long-run economic growth. Twice as many economists think Mr McCain’s plan would be bad or very bad for long-run growth as Mr Obama’s. Given how much focus Mr McCain has put on his plan’s benefits for growth, this last is quite a repudiation.
Mr McCain gets his highest mark, an average of 3.5 and a clear advantage over Mr Obama, for his position on free trade and globalisation. If Mr Obama “would wake up on free trade”, one respondent says, “I could get behind the plans much more.” Perhaps surprisingly, the economists rated trade low in priority compared with the other issues listed. Only 53% say it is important or very important. Neither candidate scored at all well on dealing with the burgeoning cost of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.
The economists also prefer Mr Obama’s tax plans. Republicans and respondents who do not identify with either political party see Mr McCain’s tax policies as more efficient but less equitable. But the former prefer Mr McCain’s plans—43% of Republicans say they are good or very good—and the latter Mr Obama’s. Of non-affiliated respondents, 31% say Mr Obama’s are good or very good.
Either way, according to the economists, it would be difficult to do much worse than George Bush. The respondents give Mr Bush a dismal average of 1.7 on our five-point scale for his economic management. Eighty-two per cent thought Mr Bush’s record was bad or very bad; only 1% thought it was very good.
The Democrats were overwhelmingly negative, but nearly every respondent viewed Mr Bush’s record unfavourably. Half of Republican respondents thought Mr Bush deserves only a 2. “The minimum rating of one severely overestimates the quality of Bush’s economic policies,” says one non-aligned economist.
Ben Stein's Take
2) Eliminate regulation of Wall Street and/or fail to enforce the regulations that already exist, instead trusting Wall Street and other money managers and speculators to manage other people's money with few or no regulations and little oversight.
3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.
4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.
5) Allow investment banks, insurers, and banks to bet their entire net worth and then some on the premise that borrowers known to be improvident will in fact repay those loans.
6) Allow the creation of large betting pools called "hedge funds" that can move markets and control the outcome of trading, thus taking a forum for savings and retirement for families and making it into a rigged casino game that exists primarily to fleece suckers like ordinary working men and women.
7) Have laws that protect corporate officers from being sued for misconduct but at the same time punish lawyers in the private sector who ferret out such misconduct and try to make accountable the people responsible for shareholder and investor losses. If one of those lawyers gets particularly aggressive in protecting stockholders, put him in prison.
8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.
9) Scare Americans into putting up $750 billion of their hard earned money to bail out the billionaires and their friends who created the market for loans to poor credit risks (The "subprime" market) and the unbelievably large side bets on those loans, promising that such a bailout would save the retirement savings of Americans, then allow the immense hedge funds to make the market crater immediately afterwards.
10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.
11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since the days of FDR.
12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.
There, that should do it.
04 October, 2008
Thoughts on the Current Financial Situation
John McCain co-sponsored a bill to increase oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2005. The bill did not become law.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00190:@@@P
What other actions were taken to avert this crises?
If you have been watching the debates, you know that Republicans and President Bush have been consistently blamed for not supporting "regulation". You be the judge.
Two more points -
If you are not familiar with it, learn more about the community reinvestment act. This act requires banks to loan money to underserved areas - a worthy goal, except by definition these loans are then often given to those who cannot pay back the loan and would not qualify otherwise. If the economy turns, these types of loans are often the first to go unpaid. Home ownership is part of the American Dream, but should only be pursued by those who are in a financial position to do so.
Also, the current situation shows the fallacy of GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises). Businesses must be explicitly public or private - half and half does not work, and ends up requiring massive government intervention when times turn bad. Of course, when the government is willing to spend 800 billion for "bailouts", are any of these financial companies really private any more?
There's plenty of blame to go around, but let's make sure we are grounded in the facts before we start making accusations.
03 October, 2008
Bailout Pork
Category: Federal Budget, Headlines By TCS
Tag: budget, bailout
Pub Date: Oct 03, 2008
Update:
The House has just passed the final version of the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, without making any changes to the version received from the Senate. The final vote was 263-171. To see how your Representative voted, click here.
Note:
In the analysis below we identified where we could specific champions of each provision. One thing that we did not explain very well is that many of the provisions are “extenders.” Meaning that what this legislation does in many cases is simply extend existing law that was set to expire at the end of this year, and in some cases it reinstates existing legislation that expired earlier in the year. So we couldn’t necessarily go back in history to identify who originally promoted some of the provisions. Many of these provisions had already been voted on and passed earlier this year, but had not been voted on in the House. So the Senate simply stuck them on to the underlying legislation. This is also true for other things tacked onto the bill, such as the Alternative Minimum Tax patch.
The following are some of the top tax sweeteners in the Senate passed Bailout Bill. Not all the provisions are per se outrageous, but collectively are intended to help Congressional leadership get final passage of the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
- Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children
Current law places an excise tax of 39 cents on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The Oregon senators were the initial sponsors of the provisions. According to Bloomberg News, the provision would be worth $200,000 to Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon.
- Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility
Track owners want to be able write-off the cost of their facilities on their taxes over seven years - a depreciation timetable many of them have used for decades. But the IRS has wanted to stretch it to at least 15 years and has raised questions whether the increasingly popular tracks really belong in the same tax category as amusement parks.
Auto track owners are simply trying to get out of paying more taxes - which they'd have to do if they deducted less every year. These owners have gotten plenty of tax breaks over the years from states and localities eager to get speedways. The provision would be extended 2 years till the end of 2009 and would cost $100 million. The provision encompasses all facilities including grandstands, parking lots and concession stands.
- Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
- Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit
- Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation
The bailout bill would give a tax break to Exxon Valdez plaintiffs, allowing them to average out their punitive damages awards over three years rather than suffer a one-time tax hit from the Internal Revenue Service, as well as other provisions. Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is a big supporter of this provision. Cost is estimated at $49 million.
- Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Secure Rural Schools lead sponsors Reps. DeFazio (D-OR), Bill Sali (R-ID); Sens. Wyden (D-OR), Larry Craig (R-ID), are major boosters of this program that expired in 2006. In 1908 the federal government agreed to share logging revenue from Forest Service land with neighboring communities that could not tax the land because it was federal. As logging declined in the 1990s, the "county payments" program was initiated in 2000 to directly provide federal funding, more than half going to Oregon, to deal with the loss of revenue. The original version of this provision was introduced as a bill in early 2007 and was estimated to cost $2.2 billion when the OR and ID delegations came to agreement. To give the package more heft, Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) was added to the package, bringing the total cost to $3.3 billion. PILT provides more general funding to counties for federal lands located within their borders. Sen. Reid (D-NV) talked about the PILT program being one of the important elements of the package when the Senate passed the bailout bill.
- Sec. 201. Deduction for state and local sales taxes
- Sec 502. Provisions related to film and television productions
In an effort to keep film and television productions in the U.S, they would be eligible for a tax incentive program. Under this program, the cost of production of qualifying films would be permitted to be immediately expensed -- that is, fully deducted from income for tax purposes -- in the year the expenditures occur. This provision also makes permanent other favorable tax treatments for production. Historically Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA) has been a supporter (dating from its creation in the 2004 corporate tax bill). The cost is estimated at $478 million over 10 years.
- Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds
The tariff relief (duty savings) is intended to benefit U.S. worsted wool fabric producers that use imported fibers and yarns as inputs, as well as U.S. tailored clothing manufacturers that use imported fabrics as inputs. This provision was originally introduced as a bill in December 2007 by Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Melissa Bean (D-IL). It extends current law provisions until 12/31/14, and in some cases to12/31/15. The 2010 to 2015 cost is estimated to be $148 million.
- Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa
This extends by two years a previously approved tax credit, the American Samoa economic development credit. In general, this credit allows certain corporations operating in American Samoa a tax credit. The possessions tax credit allows these corporations to offset a portion of their U.S. tax liability on income earned in American Samoa from active business operations, sales of assets used in a business, or certain investments in American Samoa. The cost is $33 million, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Here are some other interesting provisions
Current law allows taxpayers to write-off 50% of the cost of any facility placed in service before January 1, 2013 that produces cellulosic ethanol. This provision expands the types of facilities that may be written-off to include production of other cellulosic biofuels in addition to cellulosic ethanol.
Sec. 211. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters
Allows employers to provide a benefit to employees for costs associated with bicycle commuting, including purchase and repair of a bicycle, bicycle improvements, and bicycle storage. This provision was proposed in 2007 in the Senate by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and in the House by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). This provision is estimated to cost $10 million.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory
Extends by two years, until December 31, 2009, a provision allowing for deductions related to the charitable donation of “apparently wholesome food”—defined as food intended for human consumption that meets all quality and labeling standards imposed by law and regulations even though the food may not be readily marketable. This provision also changes the application of the law as it relates to donations by farmers and ranchers. The cost is $149 million, according to Joint Committee on Taxation.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of bookinventory
Extends by two years, until December 31, 2009, a tax benefit for the contribution of books to public schools. The provision is worth $49 million.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund
Transfers interest earned on money in the abandoned mine reclamation fund to the United Mine Workers of America Combined Benefit Fund, which helps pay health benefits for retired miners and their dependents who worked under collective bargaining agreements that promised lifetime health-care benefits. States with the most miners receiving benefits have historically been Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio. This provision extends existing law to include a $9 million transfer for 2010.
Fact Check
The Statement:
Gov. Sarah Palin said at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate that Sen. Barack Obama has "pretty much only voted along his party lines. In fact, 96 percent of his votes have been solely along party line."
The Facts:
Congressional Quarterly examined Obama's votes in the Senate. According to the analysis, Obama has indeed voted with the Democratic Party 96 percent of the time.
CQ - a non-partisan and highly respected journal of Congressional affairs - says Senator John McCain has voted in line with the Republican Party 86 percent of the time. McCain's total number of votes is much larger, since he has been in the Senate since 1986, while Obama is in his first term.
Congressional Quarterly also looked at what it deemed to be "key" votes. That analysis found Obama voted with his party on 29 out of 30 votes, which came out to 97 percent of the time. For McCain, CQ said there have been 335 "key" votes over the years, and that he voted with his party on 266 of them — 79 percent of the time.
The Verdict: True.
01 October, 2008
"I have a bracelet too"
If you are going to wear a soldier's name on your wrist, you should know the soldier's name.
I hope this spreads to more states...
La Shawn Barber
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Who would have thought in 2008, some 50 years after the country groaned under the strain of dismantling laws and practices that relegated blacks to second class citizenship, the government still would be discriminating against people on the basis of race?
Alive and well is the practice of assessing black job applicants, contract bidders, and prospective college students under standards lower than those used to assess others, all in the name of diversity. Euphemistically known as affirmative action, this practice is odious enough when done in the private sector. But when the government does it, it's time to act.
Ward Connerly, a former University of California Regent, embarked on a mission in 1995 to put government out of the skin color business through state ballot initiatives. Californians voted against preferences in government hiring, contracting, and admissions by 54 percent in 1996. So did 58.3 percent of voters in Washington state in 1998 and 58 percent of Michigan voters in 2006.
The campaigns continue. In March, the Colorado Secretary of State determined that the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative (CoCRI) had received enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. On November 4, 2008, the people of Colorado will vote on whether their state government may continue preferring members of one group over another based on race and sex.
Amendment 46 would amend the state constitution to read: "The state shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any group or individual on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public contracting, or public education."
Various groups tried to stop the campaign. One group claimed CoCRI signature gatherers duped people into signing a petition to keep preferences. Last month, an administrative law judge threw out those claims.
CoCRI director Jessica Peck Corry said, "Given the lack of evidence presented by our opposition, the court did the right thing by dismissing all of the complaints. We will continue to fight with vigor any and all false allegations against Amendment 46."
Although the terms "affirmative action" and "race preferences" are used interchangeably, they are not synonymous. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order mandating federal contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants were treated equally "without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." They were encouraged to cast a wider recruitment net to include in the hiring pool qualified minorities who historically had been excluded. That, and only that, is affirmative action.
The concept as we know it today evolved from a policy set forth by President Richard M. Nixon. In 1971, he authorized the Department of Labor to set specific goals and timetables to correct the "underutilization" of blacks by federal contractors. A quota by any other name…
Today, Republicans are demonized for opposing race preferences, but it was a Republican who got the ball rolling in the first place. Politics aside, Americans can disagree about affirmative action and whether it's still needed in 2008, but there should be no disagreement about government practices and policies that prefer one person over another based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.