A wise Chinese proverb states …
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
But in the United States, the proverb doesn’t apply because in order to teach a man to fish, he’ll first have to …
Falsehood #1
Warren Buffet does not pay less taxes than his secretary like Obama keeps preaching. Here’s what people don’t understand and Obama is misleading those who believe him; Warren Buffet pays Capital Gains tax. His secretary pays Federal Income tax. They are two very different things because they earn their money in two very different ways.
A capital gains tax (CGT) is a tax charged on capital gains, the profit realized on the sale of a non-inventory asset that was purchased at a lower price. The most common capital gains are realized from the sale of stocks, bonds, precious metals and property. Warren Buffet makes the vast majority of his money by selling and buying stocks. He pays taxes on the profits, or the difference in what he paid for the stock and what sold it for. This is not considered income. It’s called a capital gain and is taxed at a rate of 15%. Everyone pays 15% on capital gains, no matter how much money you make, or have made.
Buffet’s secretary is not buying and selling stocks, nor is she being paid in stock options. She is being paid by her employer, Warren Buffet. Therefore, she pays a Federal Income Tax. The current tax code is setup such that there are several tax brackets. The more you make, the more you pay in taxes. My guess is she probably makes a six digit salary, therefore, she probably pays around 30%.
Right now, Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary – an outrage he has asked us to fix.
What people don’t know, is that Warren Buffet pays himself a salary of about $100,000 a year which can be taxed as income, just like his secretary. If Warren Buffet wanted to pay more in taxes, he would simply pay himself in the form of a higher salary instead of his capital gains income. But of course he doesn’t do this because he knows he would have to pay more in taxes. He therefore pays himself money in such a way that he’s subjected to the capital gains tax instead of the Federal Income tax. Warren Buffet is deliberately circumventing having to pay higher taxes. It’s the same reason why Steve Jobs paid himself a salary of $1 a year, claiming he would also sacrifice for the good of his employees. But what they didn’t tell you is the Steve Jobs was paying himself millions of dollars in stock options because they are taxed at 15% and not 30% like a federal income (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary).
Therefore, Obama is misleading the people when he says Warren Buffet pays less in taxes than his secretary. He’s paying less in Federal Income because he pays himself very little in the form of a salary and instead pays himself with profits by selling and buying stocks.
Falsehood #2
In Obama’s speech, he pounds home the desire to have more jobs created in America and not overseas. I find this ironic. The person Obama appointed as his head jobs committee is Jeffery Immelt, CEO of General Electric.
That’s why I’ve brought together a Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.
… just not in America.
This year, GE decided to ship its 115-year old X-ray business from Wisconsin to China (source: ). In addition, over the last decade, GE has moved a large portion of its light bulb production to China (source: ). Employment within this division of GE has decreased by about 68%, in which a large chunk have migrated overseas to China. In Ohio alone, about 15 of GE’s light bulb factories have been shut down since 1980.
If Obama were truly interested in creating jobs in America, he wouldn’t have appointed the CEO of General Electric to the position, who is responsible for shipping so many American jobs overseas to China.
Falsehood #3
Obama wants you to think he doesn’t engage in class warfare, yet he is constantly pitting the rich against the poor by saying the rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. Here are just a few quotes from his most recent speech:
Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires? Or should we put teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs?
… rich vs kids.
While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets.
… rich vs poor.
Falsehood #4
Federal Government investments don’t work. Sometimes, the technology just isn’t profitable or cannot be manufactured efficiently. This is evident with the “green jobs” incentive.
If we provide the right incentives and support – and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules – we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced bio-fuels to semiconductors that are sold all over the world.
Just recently, Solyndra Inc, who manufactures and sells solar panels filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. This after they received $535 million dollars in government stimulus grants and loans (Source). Investing more money into these industries and technologies that are not profitable will not help the economy. It will only hurt it by increasing the federal debt and creating a huge burden on future generations who have to pay back the failed stimulus spending.
Worse yet, a lot of the stimulus money for “green” jobs has gone overseas (Source). For example, the largest grant made under the “green energy stimulus” thus far, a $178 million payment on Dec. 29, went to Babcock & Brown, a bankrupt Australian company that built a Texas wind farm using turbines made by a Japanese company.
Bottom line; If the private sector could make a profit by making these “green” products, they would do it! But they can’t, so they don’t. The government cannot continuously and forever pick companies and technologies it wants to invest money in.
Falsehood #5
Obama has appointed numerous czars to oversee various aspects of Federal agencies. In addition, he has allowed some agencies to create and implement various regulations with no congressional oversight or approval. So when he says …
So far, we’ve identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. We should have no more regulation than the health, safety, and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common sense test.
… he’s misleading you. He’s not interested in getting government out of the way. That’s what would happen if regulations were removed. Instead, he believes government is the answer. This is why he is continually passing stimulus and reform acts that create more laws and government oversight. This is why the EPA is passing more and more regulations. This is why he enacted a drilling moratorium. This is why he passed legislation that now states all student loans are 100% Federally controlled (Source).
Falsehood #6
As much as Obama would like you to believe this wasn’t a campaign infomercial, it was. Don’t let him fool you. Within his speech, he repeats 17 times that congress should just pass the bill.
… wow. That was really bad.
What’s funny is, Harry Reid has allowed Congress a one week break before getting to this jobs bill. And when they return, the bill won’t even be their top priority. He says there are other more important bills they need to work on. This tells you only one thing; this bill Obama wrote is so toxic, not even Harry Reid will touch it.
So again, it looks like Obama was doing nothing more than trying to sell the People a bad bill. A bill so bad, not even Harry Reid will put it up for a vote. A bill so bad, Harry Reid is treating it as if it’s a political hand grenade.
Lots of folks are starting to panic a bit now that the stock market has shed roughly 15% in the last 10 days. And rightly so. We haven’t seen the market tank this bad since the recession started back in 2008. But this time it’s a little more interesting. Well, maybe scary is a better word.
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Unlike the recession of 2008, we don’t have the same mechanisms at our disposal to try and quell the panic and stimulate the economy. We’re also starting off in a worse spot. Interest rates are near 0%, and they can’t go any lower. The government has already printed trillions of dollars out of thin air to “stimulate” the economy, which failed to work. The credit rating has been downgraded from the highest level of AAA to AA+ by S&P, which means there is significant concern on their part that the government debt is starting to get out of control. We now have a 100% GDP to debt ratio which is increasing year over year. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. Unemployment is at 9.1% and holding steady. In case you didn’t know, that’s all bad.
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Even worse yet, if the United States slips back into a second recession before it has recovered from the first, we could see huge losses, not only in the stock market, but in private sector and public sector jobs. The outcome of which will be much worse than the first recession because as I mentioned previously, we are starting off in a worse spot.
One could easily make the argument that we have already entered a second recession. The GDP has decreased to 1.3% and unemployment has been steadily increasing. The national trade deficit has increased. The dollar has also been declining for months. To top it off, the consumer price index is also trending negative, providing more evidence that the economy is going to start slowing down even more. And today, the market dropped -634 points, the 6th largest drop on record. Most economists now give the United States a 50-50 shot of a double-dip recession.
I’ll make this prediction: If we have entered a second recession, it’s going to get really bad. Jimmie Carter bad. Unemployment could easily hit 14%. The stock market could easily lose 40% of its value. We would most likely enter a period of stagflation, where the economy actually contracts while interest rates climb. Government revenues will decrease leaving the Federal Reserve all out of options, but one; print more money. This will make matters immensely worse in that inflation would set in very quickly. A second downgrade on US credit would be probable. Interest rates would start to climb making it more expensive to borrow money. The government would be forced to make huge cuts in entitlement programs and defense spending just to service the debt. States would lose revenue due to foreclosures and a high unemployment rate. They too would be forced to make drastic cuts in spending and entitlements such as pensions.
Sound unlikely? During Jimmie Carter’s era, inflation hit 18% per year. Military pay increases were frozen. The prime interest rate hit 21.5% which caused home mortgages to exceed 16%. There was an energy crisis which lead to long lines at gas stations.
Eventually, the country would correct itself and get back on its feet. Ronald Reagan was able to pull the country out of similar economic conditions he inherited from Jimmie Carter in a little over 4 years. I however have little confidence that the government we have today would be smart enough to fix these problems. It will be up to the People to vote out the folks who got the country into this mess. That means removing political figures from both sides of the isle.
“If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.” – Dave Ramsey
The main focus of the Tea Party is to cut Federal Government spending. That’s it. Nothing more, and nothing less. So based on the above quote, why are the Tea Party folks considered insane, delusional, terrorists, and anti-American? Why is everything their fault?
If the above quote does not sound insane, then I ask you; Is that how you run your family finances? Does that sound normal? Of course not. The Tea Party movement is trying to make the Federal Government more sane when it comes to spending. They want to cut spending. Not increase it.
On the other hand, we have the left-wing Liberals/Progressives who want more of the same. They want more stimulus and more spending. They want more debt and a larger deficit. Based on the quote above, and if you had a friend who was is a similar situation, would you find them to be insane if they said they needed to cut spending, or would you find them insane if they said they needed to spend more? The Tea Party is the whole reason there were cuts in this latest spending budget bill, because the liberals were well poised to raise the debt limit without a single spending cut.
And as of today (august 5th, 2011), the United States Government for the first time in its history has had its AAA credit rating downgraded to an AA+ rating. This downgrade wasn’t a result of spending cuts. It was a result of spending too much money without enough cuts. While this is nothing but a small downgrade, it speaks volumes for a couple reasons.
The first being, no one thought S&P would ever downgrade the credit rating – no matter what. They didn’t during the housing mortgage crisis, the recession of 2008, or the Jimmie Carter era when the inflation rate was up around 18% a year. After all, this is the United States of America! How dare they! But guess what? They didn’t succumb to the government’s pressure … and cut it anyway.
Despite all the pressure coming from the government not to cut its rating, S&P still felt that Government spending no longer met the criteria of a AAA rating. And they are right. Especially when the debt to GDP ratio is now 100% (9th worse out of 129 countries in the world). The recent budget bill only cuts about $2 trillion from the debt over the next 10 years (70% of the cuts don’t happen until the year 2017), but the budget also spends $7 trillion over the same amount of time. So in reality, there is no cut. It’s simply a reduction in how much they are spending and it’s based mostly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan coming to an end.
The Tea Party folks who were being anti-American, terrorists, delusional and insane were in fact trying to stop the very thing that just happened; the first ever downgrade of the United States credit rating. They were the only ones who were protecting this great country. They were the ones yelling “STOP!”, we are heading towards disaster. All they wanted were cuts. And they barely got anything.
Instead, the liberals and progressives (President Bush was a progressive) who said we should spend more are the ones who just made it much more expensive for all of us to borrow money. Car loans, house loans, credit cards, student loans will be more expensive in the near future (maybe not now, but trust me, there will be inflation). They are the ones who have made the national debt a national security concern. They are the ones who have burdened our children with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt the minute they are born.
It’s the liberals who wanted the Tea Party folks to get out of the way and simply pass the budget bill with a debt ceiling raise with no spending cuts attached. They are the real terrorists who fear-mongered virtually every senior into thinking they wouldn’t get their social security paycheck, the Medicare coverage, or their Medicaid coverage if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, when in fact this was completely false. It was a complete and total lie.
So I ask you this … the US credit rating has been downgraded from AAA to AA+ for the first time ever because we didn’t cut enough in the budget bill (Those are S&P words, not mine). If the Tea Party wanted to cut spending and not raise the debt ceiling, how are they at fault?
In some business environments, it’s usually a good idea to lock down the usage of external USB storage devices and memory sticks to prevent users from accidentally introducing a virus onto the network or copying data off the network.
You can manually modify the registry to lock down the USB storage devices by changing the following Windows XP registry value:
- HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
- Change the Start REG_DWORD value from a decimal 3 to a decimal 4
