Real Definition of Taxes

There has been much talk in recent years about changing the tax code, simplifying it, making a flat tax, a FAIR tax, a VAT tax, a national sales tax, or some new form of tax code that would benefit the nation as a whole.

Realists want to change the tax code. Yet we realists know that the idealists running Washington will never go for changing the tax code. They will run for elections saying they want to make changes, yet once they get elected nothing will get changed.

Well, progressives will change things, and conservatives will change them back. That's about the only change we see anymore in Washington. That is, unless the changes progressives make are so damaging that they can't be unchanged, kind of like Social Security and Welfare.

Don't get me wrong, social security and welfare programs are good for many people. Yet if Social Security worked the way FDR originally drew it up, it wouldn't be about to go bankrupt, and those receiving checks would make a lot more.

Of course we know passing that bill was like passing healthcare reform, where it was approved with the "promise" of making it better, or with the promise to make it so that healthcare wouldn't pay for abortions. Yet those changes are rarely if ever made. All that matters to progressives is that they get their bills passed. It's baby steps baby.

So allow me to define taxes. It's not an easy word to define. If you look in the dictionary you'll get one definition, and that's basically the definition conservatives and traditional Americans use. Yet when you think outside the box as you and I do, taxes are defined by who you are and what you believe.

For conservatives and capitalists, taxes are about the economy; it's about making money. That's why conservatives and capitalists always talk about lowering taxes in order to stimulate the economy, considering every time certain taxes are cut the Federal government draws in more income.

That's why conservatives get vexed when liberals choose to raise taxes. Conservatives want a tax code that will allow governments to raise money so they don't go into debt.

To liberals (both republican and democrat) taxes are about power. That's why they aren't concerned when taxes go up and the economy tanks.

To liberals taxes are about the power to create whatever kind of society you want. To give tax credits, tax breaks, or deductions for people who do this or buy that so you can get them to buy the things you want them to buy, such as homes.

Liberals will never vote to get rid of that kind of power. It's the basis of progressivism. Taxes allow liberals the ability to grow their progressive agenda. They use it to get people to stop smoking or start smoking cigarettes, to stop drinking or to drink more alcohol. You can alter the tax code to get people to make more charitable contributions or less.

More important, politicians can use the tax code to buy votes. They can give tax breaks to certain individuals for doing certain things, and they can give tax breaks to certain businesses. In this way, politicians can buy votes and pay back anyone who gives campaign contributions.

Politicians have even use the tax code as an excuse to add more unwanted laws and take away more freedom, such as the healthcare reform bill. Here they refer to the healthcare reform bill as a tax, and that's how they justify the constitutionality of forcing people to buy healthcare even though the healthcare bill is really unconstitutional.

As long as there are progressives running Washington, a better, more fair, less skewered, less progressive tax code will never be written.

A fair tax?

In 1913 the progressive income tax was ratified, and it became Constitutional to tax people based on the amount of money they made. Thus, the more you make, the more you pay. While those who championed it "promised" taxes would never exceed 7% on the top income brackets, within three years the top income tax rate was a whopping 75%.

This "amendment" ultimately gave the government the power to treat some Americans different than others depending on what they bought and how much money they made. This was one of the culminating successes of the progressive movement, and a culmination of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency.

The U.S. Constitution notes that "All men are created equal." This amendment assured that those who make more money, or achieve, are taxed at a different level than those who do not succeed, or make less, and therefore was a culminating moment for the progressive movements attempt to take from the rich and give to the poor.

It is this amendment that the the Obama administration is using to say that Obama care is Constitutional. They see "Mandatory Healthcare" as just another way of taxing people. Whether this argument will stand over the 10th amendment, which notes that the states have a right to sovereignty over anything not "hereby" mentioned in "this here Constitution."

Thus, Obamacare makes it legal to take from those who make a lot of money in order to "subsidize" or provide "for free" to those who can't afford their own healthcare insurance program.

Sure this all sounds good on the surface, but it's all proof that the founding fathers were correct that the government, given an inch of power, would ultimately create too much government, which ultimately, and by nature, takes away freedom from the people. The more powerful the government, the less powerful the people (i.e., the states).

The progressive tax actually allows the government to say, well, you make more than him, so you should pay higher taxes on this. And you make more than him, so you should make more money than him. And, thus, the government has the power to "unfairly" tax people.

Ultimately, the progressive tax of 1913 led to an 80,000 page and corrupt tax code, and now a healthcare program that is equally unfair to those who achieve. The solution to this mess is a flat tax. A flat tax would make sure that all Americans are taxed equally. If you make $20,000 a year, you pay 11.5%. If you make $1,000,000,000,000 you pay 11.5%.

Fair.

Will tea on tax day parties spike a movement?

No taxation without representation. That was the plea of the protestors at the Boston Tea Party of 1773. The same still applies today.

I see my blogging friends, like the Right View from the Left Coast, are blogging about the tea parties that will be happening on tax day, April 15. While millions of procrastinators will be rushing to finish filing their taxes, large groups of people who do not want their taxes raised will by joining the "right wing" protests.

I put quotes around right wing there on purpose, as it seems many in the main stream media consider these protests as "the extremest view" to be ignored. And while the press is ignoring these important tea parties, the U.S. government has decided that conservatives who attend them are "right wingers" and should be treated equal to terrorists.

The latest "right wing"blog I've discovered is A Conservative Thinker. He writes today about how the Homeland Security Department now considers

According to a new unclassified document, of which "Right Wing Extrimism" is the topic. The consequence of a prolonged economic downturn... could create a fertile recruiting environment for right wing extrimists."

It also explains that right wingers are capitalizing on the election of the first black president to increase their recruiting efforts. Actually, they should have said capitalizing on the most liberal person ever to sit in the office of the president.

Never the less, the document warns against conservatism. It places conservatives at the same level as terrorists. Wait! Since Obama doesn't perceive terrorists as a threat, this document now places conservatives as a greater threat to this nation than terrorists.

So, watch out! There may be a conservative near you!

Well, hold on. I happen to support the tea parties and I am no terrorist. And I think 99% of those who are attending these tea parties, or who support them as I do, are normal American citizens who don't want to see their taxes go up at the benefit of the rich and the poor who have done nothing to earn it.

The purpose of the tea parties is the same as it was during the Boston Tea party so many years ago, and that is to protest King George's tax on tea for the purpose of funding things the common people of America did not benefit from. The general theme was: why should American colonists pay for wars way over in Europe.

While symbolic, the tea parties resemble the same traditional values of the particpators in the original tea party. That the purpose of coming to America in the first place was to escape tyrany, to escape being forced to be a particular religion, and to escape being forced to pay taxes that incorporate no benefit to those paying them.

This is more than just a protest on taxes, they are also a protest of the large government bailout of big businesses. So, you have the rich who are failures at running businesses getting half our money, and poor who didn't earn it getting the rest.

What about us poor folks in the middle? Wasn't Obama supposed to be the voice of the common folk?

The purpose of the tea parties to provide common tax paying folks like you and me an opportunity to voice our concern. And, quite frankly, I think it's about time the good people on the right side of the isle decided to take action.

As my blogging friends have stated, I hope this movement takes hold and, despite the wishes of the liberals who fear conservatives so much they classify them as a greater threat than terrorists, I pray it grows the conservative movement to the level that won in 1980 and 1994.

Dems still have no clue how to manage economy

Does the Democratic party ever learn? That is one of the questions I'm pondering now that I've just read an AP report that Democrats in the House just passed a bill that would "raise taxes for millions of Americans by $683 billion over the next five years. It would also give generous increases to domestic programs."

Likewise, "The Democratic-written plan would bring the federal budget back into the black by letting all of President Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of 2010." Basically, that would result in the biggest tax increase in American history.

A tax increase is exactly what we don't need right now, especially with 40 percent of economists in the U.S. predicting that we either are in already or are headed into a recession. History has proven again and again that raising taxes only prolongs recessions, and cutting taxes is the way to get out of them.

Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush proved this when they raised taxes to jump start faltering economies that they inherited, and each time the tax cuts sent the economy into a boom.

And Herbert Hoover raised taxes which helped send the recession he inherited into a depression, and FDR raised taxes that made sure the depression would last a long time. I know he thought he was doing a good thing, but by taking more money out of the pockets of people who already don't have any, you are hurting the economy.

No matter how messed up the republican party is, this is one of the main reasons I simply cannot align myself with the democratic party. They just don't get it. They fail to learn from history.

The Senate on the other hand passed some of Bush's tax cut proposals. That's a step in the right direction, but it may not be enough to save us.

The tax refunds are a nice gesture, and I will wisely use this money, but this, in my opinion, will not prevent a recession. Oh, I suppose it might, but the best way to stymie a recession is to cut taxes and decrease domestic spending, not increase it. Americans can barely pay their bills as it is, can you imagine if they had less money to play with.

They will say we need to do this to help the poor, to help those who have lost their jobs, to help those who have lost their houses. I feel for those people, but why throw all the rest of us hard working Americans into poverty too.

You want to raise taxes on the rich? The rich aren't stupid. When you raise their taxes, when you raise the taxes of the upper middle class, they are going to hoard their money, stop spending, stop investing, and businesses will suffer as a result.

The rich and the upper middle class create 80% of the jobs in our market. It's not going to be a pretty picture when they stop hiring new workers because they are in a hoarding mode. And, with fewer people working, that means less money for the government, even thought those who do work have to pay more.

We will all suffer. What we need to do is cut taxes, allow people and businesses to keep more of their well earned money, encourage them to spend and invest and create more jobs. While we might make less money in the short term, in the long term we will have more tax payers, and thus more money.

We aren't going to get out of debt by spending and taxing.

This is no different than the way we run our finances at our homes. When we find that we are making less money, or find ourselves in debt, we stop spending. That's not rocket science, it's common sense.

I'm not worried because there's no way any tax hike will ever get by the Presidents desk, but if Hilary or Obama get elected, we could be in for a ride. I'm not making a prediction here. And, if they did raise taxes, I would hope they'd prove me wrong.

More than likely, if we ignore history during these fragile economic times, we could send the greatest economy in the history of the world in the wrong direction, and we will all suffer as a result.

So wise up Democrats.

Economic stimulus package works for me

I am very impressed at how fast the president and congress worked to get this economic stimulus package through. It still has to be finalized, but it looks as thought it's going to get done.

I listened to a commentary the other day where the person was complaining that Bush was not the right man to fix the economy, but I don't agree with that person. I think Bush is the perfect man, especially considering he did it before.

History has proven time and again that the best way to get out of a recession, or to stave off a recession, is via tax cuts. We can have a discussion or debate over why that is in a later post.

But historically, tax cuts have worked, so it only makes sense that this was part of the package.
Well, I don't think I'm going to get a tax cut, but businesses are. I suppose the purpose of this is to create an incentive for them to create more jobs. That sounds logical to me.

But I really like this part of the bill because my family could really use the $1,800 or whatever the government is going to give me. But I'm not going to use it the way the government hopes: I will pay off debt.

Why can't congress and the president get together and pass other bills this quickly? Why can't they get together and pass a bill to secure our borders to end the illegal immigration fiasco?

That was a dumb question I know. The answer is because George Bush is trying to create a republican dynasty, and future republican candidates need these problems to go unsolved so they can cater to voters by devising solutions to these problems.

You know the #1 political rule: In order to get elected there has to be a problem that you have the best solution to. Democrats are the best at doing this by telling poor people that they will solve their problems with more government programs catered to help them.

Democrats also cater to Mexicans by telling them they will grant illegal Mexican immigrants amnesty. And, of course, once these illegal immigrants are legal, they will be poor and in need of governmental help themselves. And, when the democrats offer them governmental solutions to their problems, they will vote democratic when they are finally legal.

Republicans, on the other hand, know there is a public outcry for a fence, and they propose to build a fence. If Bush put up that fence he might lose the votes of the people of whom this is their top priority.

Republicans also know there is a public outcry to make abortion illegal. If the Conservative Supreme Court ended up making abortion illegal, then the Christian vote would be up for grabs.

That is politics in a nutshell. Instead of just doing what is right all the time, they wait until their backs are to the wall. And, with many experts saying "recession" Bush and Congress were pressed hard against the way, and they acted.

The goal here is that people will spend this money, which sounds funny to me becasue isn't that how we got to the point we need a stimulus package in the first place, that people spent money they didn't have. How do you spend yourself out of debt.

Like I said, my wife and I are not going to spend our money, perhaps the rest of the country ought to do the same.

Part of the tax stimulus package calls for giving money to people who never paid taxes in the first place. Is that a good idea? What did they do to deserve it? Isn't' this called handouts?

Okay, so we can look past that. That's what Bush needed to throw in to get a compromise, and compromises are good because that's how we became a nation in the first place.

So, without looking at U.S economy as a whole, the stimulus package works well for me. I'm going to take my money and run.

Bad Leadership in Michigan

Oh boy. Something is wrong with the Michigan economy, and democrats and a few republicans in that state have just made matters worse.

During the .com bubble of the 1990s states, like Michigan, found their profits soaring. The eyes of the legislature lit up, "Wow! All that money to spend..."

Instead of spending that money wisely, and encouraging people to save and invest, state legislatures, like the one in Michigan, spent that money like it was going to continue coming in forever. Then, when the .com bubble burst just prior to the end of the Bill Clinton presidency, these states found themselves running in the red.

This isn’t the first time this has happened in American history, as few of the mistakes our government makes are. However, some of us learn from our mistakes and some of us never do.

Yes well managed government programs can be a good thing. Yes we do need to pay some taxes. We need this money for essential government programs like repairing roads, educating kids, social services, etc.

Ultimately you reach a point of diminishing returns. Michigan hit that point when the .com bubble burst.

This happened because our elected officials see a needy group of people and propose to solve their problem with a new government program, rather than creating an environment which allows them to solve their own problems.

Which goes to the old saying that some people think they know what’s best for others and propose to solve their problems. When governments do this they usually make the problems worse.

These programs might seem good on the surface, but the burden falls on tax payers, both individual and businesses. The result being that not only do the needy suffer, but so too does everybody else.

When taxpayers reach the point they have no money left after paying their bills and their taxes, they start to hoard their money. The economy falls into a recession.

In the past 100 years, we have had many recessions from which to learn from. Some have fallen into depressions and some have been shortlived.

Historically, as I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the short lived recessions are the ones where our government leaders relieved individuals and businesses from the burden of taxes.

George Bush understood this when he cut taxes. Overall, the economy in the United States is doing very well right now as a result.

"But...but if you cut taxes you will make less money for the government. We will have to cut programs."

The truth is, as history has proven, with sound economic policies which include tax cuts and eliminating wasteful government programs, governments have made more money with tax cuts than with tax increases.

And, by doing this, essential programs that remain can shine.

Harding, JFK, Reagan and Bush 42 all proved this.

The poor economy in Michigan is the result of overspending, overtaxing and overregulating businesses.

When taxes are raised again and again in order to support more and more government programs, the burden ultimately becomes too high for these businesses and they move to a more friendly environment or close their doors all together.

So, by cutting taxes, Bush did his part, now it was up to the states to do theirs. They needed to cut their own taxes, cut wasteful state programs, and create a good economic environment in their respective states as Bush did with the Fed.

While most states did this, Michigan did not.

What did Michigan do? Nothing. It continued to spend and spend. Thus, many of these once in the red states were now thriving, and Michigan continued to run in the red. Now Michigan is or is very close to being the worse economy in the United States.

A republican legislature had four years under the leadership of Governor Granholm to create a friendly economic environment in Michigan, but they refused to do anything that might create this friendly economy. They refused to stop taxing the people and businesses, and they refused to cut taxes.

The current democratic house, republican run Senate and a liberal Granholm in her second term continued to do nothing to help the burden on businesses and the good people of Michigan.

That, my friends, is what led to the crises that nearly led to a complete state shutdown this week.

To avoid the shutdown, Governor Granholm demanded that taxes be increased, and demanded that a 6% sales tax be expanded to many services, something business associations were adamantly opposed to.

Taxes on the people are already so much that people can hardly afford to pay their bills, so now the Michiganders will have to fork out even more money. This further sets the table for economic doom.

The same holds true for recruiting new businesses to come into Michigan. Why would any business come here when they know right away that the economy in most other states is freindlier on businesses than Michigans.

Economics 101 has proven over and over again that the best way to stop a recession is to lower the burden on the people and businesses by lowering their taxes. The money businesses do not give to the government they spend on building and new equipment, and this ultimately leads hiring more workers. Each one of these workers is a new taxpayer.

New businesses come into town because of the incentive of low taxes, and they too spend on new buildings and equipment and hire workers, all of whom, you guessed it, pay taxes.

And, by creating new taxpayers in this way, good and sound tax cuts can generate more money than tax increases.

Because it was clear that Granholm had no clue about economics 101 when her 1st term ended, I encouraged my friends not to vote for her. They did,however, and now we all have to pay the price -- literally.

While Michigan will not face a state shutdown for the time being, the tax hike Granholm petitioned for will in no way improve the economy in Michigan.

Until we get new leadership that understands how to run our economy, Michigan will be a sound example to all of the United States what will happen if Washington becomes more liberal.