President Obama, always on the campaign trail, is now on the road trying to explain why his class warfare strategy is not class warfare. In his State of the Union address, he once again invoked the “Buffett Rule”, which is little more than a fig leaf to allow Obama to raise taxes. But what about some other “Buffett Rules”?

Spending

What is the Buffett Rule on spending? Does Warren Buffett agree with President Obama that we should spend 150% of what we take in? Did Warren Buffett become one of the richest men on the planet by spending 150% of what he takes in and borrowing the shortfall? I think Buffett’s counsel would be to live within our means; don’t spend more than you take in, but I didn’t hear President Obama invoke the “Oracle of Omaha” when he submitted his budget to the Senate that was voted down 97-0. I didn’t hear Obama mention spending at all other than to say some nonsense about cutting spending by $2 trillion over ten years. At the rate we are going that level of spending “cuts” will mean we are $8 trillion deeper in debt ten years from now rather than $10 trillion. We need to cut $1 trillion in spending next year. So let’s hear what Buffett has to tell Obama about spending.

Investing

Warren Buffett is regarded as a masterful investor. What’s the Buffett Rule on investing? President Obama took credit for saving the auto industry. Really? If that is his idea of a good investment why does the price of GM stock have to rise to $52 before the American people’s investment to break even? GM stock is currently trading around $25. How many people are expecting GM’s stock to double in the near future? Or is it more likely that union contracts will once again, drag GM beneath the waves? My research indicates that Warren Buffett does not hold any GM stock. I wonder why? I do know that Warren Buffett made a very tidy profit by investing in Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile American taxpayers, you know, the ones who are under taxed, bailed out that company and many others. How much did Buffett invest in Solyndra? How much money is Warren Buffett investing in high-speed rail in California? Why should the American people believe that someone who has never held a job in private industry (Obama) is suddenly the smartest venture capitalist in America? How big of a portfolio do the real venture capital firms put in the hands of new hire fresh out of college? But this president takes billions of our tax dollars and squanders them on his pet projects and then lectures us how we need to invest in our future when they go belly up. When is Warren Buffett going to tell him to stop?

The Buffett Rule on Taxes

At the State of the Union address we were introduced to the famous secretary of Warren Buffett. She’s the poor woman who pays a higher tax rate than Mr. Buffett on her income. It is estimated that the poor dear makes between $200,000 and $500,000, otherwise she would not be paying double the tax rate of Buffett. That could put her solidly in the top 1% of earners in the country, if she is at the high-end of that range (the top 1% is earnings above $343,000). So Barack Obama actually lamenting that the top 1% is over taxed? Of course not. It is not about who is paying too much, it is about who is not paying enough.

The problem is spending, plain and simple. There are not enough rich people in America, even if taxed at 100% to close the budget gap. What Obama is doing is class warfare. Let’s get people angry enough at the wealthy so that Obama can then link the wealthy to the Republicans and sneak back into a second term.

If Obama thinks he is playing by the rules, Buffett’s rules, then he should at least play by all of them.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

In his recent telephone town hall meeting, Tim Bishop expressed his support for the continued payroll tax holiday but making it clear that it would have no impact on the Social Security Trust Fund. Money for Social Security would continue to go into the trust fund from other sources. What other sources you might ask? I may have an answer for you.

In an article in HousingWire magazine, the author points out that:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will increase guarantee fees on single-family mortgage-backed securities charged by the government-sponsored enterprises by 10 basis points effective April 1, 2012, in response to the new funding mechanism for the payroll tax cut extension passed by Congress.

So it seems that the Social Security Trust fund will get its money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or more accurately, from new home buyers. So for a two month extension of the payroll tax holiday that will prevent taxpayers from paying an additional $130 into the Social Security Trust Fund, that everyone expects to get back anyway, new home buyers will have to pay thousands in new fees.

The g-fee increase will remain in effect through Oct. 1, 2021. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the g-fees would offset about $35.7 billion in the costs of the tax cut. Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens said the increase could mean an extra $4,000 in fees on a $200,000 mortgage.

One of the problems facing Long Island is affordable housing. Our young people are leaving Long Island for areas were there is a larger rental stock that they can start out in, rather than living in mom and dad’s basement, and where they can afford to buy a house after saving a down payment for a couple of years. Apparently for the benefit of a political talking point Tim Bishop votes to slam an already weak housing marking with additional fees. After all who can really call a two month anything sound fiscal policy? Notice there is no spending cut mentioned here, it is an increase in taxes and fees. This is what Tim Bishop was telling his constituents not to worry about in his town hall meeting? What will become of his district, if nobody lives here but retirees? Is that his plan to solve the unemployment problem? Drive enough young people away until the number of jobs fits the remaining population?

The problem is spending. It was only last week that Joe Biden was attacking Mitt Romney’s policies by saying:

“His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class,” Biden added.

Decades long assault on the middle class? I guess he means you too, Bill Clinton. The greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression has been the Obama administration and if he were to get reelected it would finish America off. We have had the worst consistent unemployment since the Great Depression for the entire Obama administration. We have had the worst record of job creation, loss actually, since Herbert Hoover. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession ended in June of 2009. Does it feel like it to you? Most recoveries from economic downturns are mirror images of the slump. A gradual recession is followed by a gradual recovery; a sharp downturn is followed by a sharp upswing. Not this time. Just look at the job creation record of Team Obama.

This chart goes all the way back to Harry Truman and Obama’s performance stands alone.  Let’s put to rest the “eight years of failed Bush policy, yada, yada, yada” and face the fact that Obama and his spending, heavy-handed regulations, and insatiable appetite to fix everything by taxing more has put us into an economic winter. Tim Bishop has happily ignored the needs of his constituents to buy favor from the Democratic leadership and their special interest pals. They have done an awful job and we need to turn them out, before they turn us into Greece.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Congressman Tim Bishop held an online town hall meeting to hear questions from constituents and give his answers. Perhaps he thought this a safer forum than a live town hall meeting. Last year’s meeting in Setauket did not go well and was soon viral on You Tube.

I will comment on three of the topics from that meeting: the payroll tax cut, regulations, and manufacturing jobs.

Payroll Tax Cut

Congressman Bishop came out heavily pitching the extension of the payroll tax cut, from the normal level of 6.2% to the current level of 4.2% and even to go lower to 3.1%, for at least another year. He made the startling claim, quoting some experts that if the payroll tax cut wasn’t retained it would cost 400,000 jobs. It must be from the loss of all that spending power generated from a 2% cut in the payroll tax. I am sure pizza parlors will be devastated, as the weekly savings to a typical family will be about the cost of a pizza pie. The other statistic was that if the payroll tax was cut further to 3.1%, 750,000 new jobs would be created. Interesting. Raise the tax by 2% and 400,000 jobs would be lost, cut it by an additional 1.1% and nearly twice as many jobs would be created. Like prior predictions of how government intervention would affect jobs, we are supposed to believe that employers will start hiring if the cost of hiring a new employee  is reduced by 3.1% for just one year, before going back up. Only those people who never worked in private industry, like Bishop, Schumer, Obama, would believe that.

Bishop insisted that these cuts would have no impact to the Social Security Trust Fund. Considering that there is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund other than a bunch of IOUs from Uncle Sam’s other pocket, he may be correct on that front, but he said that the cut would be paid for cutting spending elsewhere. Not surprisingly, he didn’t say where exactly “elsewhere” was.

Throughout the call, Bishop’s press secretary was conducting a dopey poll. To paraphrase, “If you are in favor of the payroll tax cut that will put $1,500 in your pocket, press 1, if not, press 2.” Who wouldn’t press 1? What would the results be if he asked, “If you are in favor of borrowing $600 from China that your children and grandchildren will have to pay back, so that we can give you $1,500 today, press 1, if you think more borrowing and debt is a bad idea, press 2,” I think the poll would turn out quite differently.

Regulations

A caller who owned a small construction company asked about all the regulations and paperwork that businesses had to deal with. Bishop said that President Obama had things well under control forming a commission to “zero base” all regulations and hundreds and hundreds of regulations have been taken off the books. In the Wall Street Journal today there is an editorial titled, “Regulation for Dummies,” that paints a very different picture.

To answer the most basic question—has regulation increased?—we’ll focus on what the government defines as “economically significant” regulations. Those are rules that impose more than $100 million in annual costs on the economy, though there are hundreds if not thousands of new rules every year that fall well short of that.

According to an analysis of the Federal Register by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the Cabinet departments and agencies finalized 84 such regulations annually on average in President Obama’s first two years. The annual average under President Bush was 62 and under President Clinton 56

As the graph clearly shows the number of “economically significant” regulations under Obama has skyrocketed. This is what is causing the uncertainty that is hindering employment. How can this be curtailed? A bill just passed in the House of Representatives called the “Regulation from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS)”. This would require any of these economically significant regulations to be sent to Congress for approval before becoming being enacted. What the process is today is that Congress can vote against regulations, but that can be vetoed by the President. If the regulations are coming from the president, wouldn’t you expect him to veto it? This turns it around so that the Congress has to approve the regulations, if they don’t, there is nothing for the president to veto. The Democrats say this is a Congressional encroachment of the Executive.

“The REINS Act would undermine our ability to protect children from harmful toys, prevent asthma and lung ailments resulting from pollution, and ensure that our small businesses can compete fairly in the marketplace,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer added. “At the same time, it would force Congress to play a larger role in the regulatory process, leading to even more gridlock in Washington.”

Surely he forgot to mention killing bunnies in there somewhere. But let’s look at the process: Congress passes a law; departments in the Executive branch write regulations to carry out the law Congress passed. So why is it an outrage that Congress reviews economically significant regulations to see if the Executive is actually implementing what they passed? Tim Bishop voted against the REINS Act. This is another case of Democrats focusing on piddling regulations while saying “hands off” the really impactful ones.

Manufacturing Jobs

Another caller asked the Congressman about manufacturing jobs. He patted himself on the back for helping to bail out the auto industry. He said if he and others hadn’t done that that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. I addressed the implausibility of this in an earlier post. In that post I argued that if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and even if they didn’t come out of it leaner and meaner, people still needed transportation. They would buy Fords, Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, etc., that are currently built here in the U.S. Those car companies would need to increase their purchases from suppliers and those who formerly supplied GM and Chrysler would be well situated to supply the remaining car companies. The argument that we don’t manufacture here anymore is a myth. On a dollar volume basis, we still manufacture more than any country on earth. A few miles from where I am writing this, in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the largest Toyota factory outside of Japan. Due to a free trade agreement with South Korea that the Democrats blocked for years, that Toyota plant will begin exporting about 6,000 Camrys a year from Kentucky to South Korea.

One of the reasons we don’t build more here is our lousy tax code. Fix it. A reason there is not more manufacturing in Mr. Bishop’s district on Long Island is high electric rates. Factories run on power and power on Long Island is expensive. One of the reasons for that is that government approved the building of a $5 billion nuclear power plant on Long Island, and then when it was ready to throw the switch, they changed direction and said it couldn’t open. So Long Island rate payers had to find and buy electric from other sources and pay for the mothballed plant that produced nothing. Once again, the government helping us out.

But Tim Bishop has a solution. He wrote a bill to ban offshore call centers from federal contracts or loan guarantees for five-year. Nothing like micromanaging a corner of the economy while the rest of it burns. Why not look to the root cause? Tax structure, too much regulations, ObamaCare, out of control government spending. If Congress would fix those problems maybe companies wouldn’t look offshore to set up call centers.

The Budget

Tim Bishop also touched on the deficit and debt. He said we need to cut spending, but he never said what he would cut; he said we needed to control entitlement spending, but he didn’t say how he would do that; and he said we needed to add revenue, but he knew exactly how to do that, tax the rich. Here’s how I see it. The government got us into this mess by spending too much money, they should get us out of it by spending less money. Asking for any more tax revenue is just shirking their responsibility for which they are paid handsomely, and passing the problem on to us. Who couldn’t solve the problem with enough money?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

With the economy in shambles and his campaign sound bites and early interviews as president coming back to haunt him, President Obama has ramped up the class warfare rhetoric. Let’s put the lie to these strategies.

The Payroll Tax Cut

The issue here is that President Obama wants to help the middle class and he claims the Republicans do not. The famous payroll tax cut puts about $8 a week in the pocket of individuals. But everyone who pays the payroll “tax” expects to get every dollar back, and then some, after they retire. So what is really going on here? The government forces you to participate in the Social Security system. It offers a lousy rate of return compared to alternatives and if you die before you start collecting, everything you paid into it is gone. Your heirs get nothing. If Obama believes in cutting back on payroll taxes, why not convert everything to private accounts and eliminate the tax altogether? Let people save for their own retirement. Let them put more away in the good times, and be able to scale back in the bad times.

The Republicans are not opposed to Obama’s plan, their only requirement is that we cut somewhere else in the budget to make up for the shortfall. This is nothing new. Former Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning raised this very point nearly two years ago, when the Democrats held both houses of Congress. In this enormous government can’t we find anything to cut? Find the cuts and the Republicans will sign on. If not, this is just another case of piling debt on our children and grandchildren, because they will have to make up the difference when we retire.

Taxing the Rich

This week we saw former senator and former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine testify before Congress to say how sorry he was that he couldn’t find over a billion dollars of his customer’s money. But since he resigned from MF Global he doesn’t have access to any of the records to help in the search. Is the Justice Department beginning a criminal investigation?

Has anyone been charged with a crime for what happened in the fiscal meltdown of 2008? Has anyone collected more campaign cash from Wall Street than Obama? So is it unusual to conclude that President Obama, other than giving speeches, is perfectly fine with Wall Street ripping off the American people, as long as he can rip off the most successful people in America and claim he is looking out for the little guy. Let his pals get boatloads of government money to bail out their companies so they can keep getting richer and then say he wants to tax them more. Is it any surprise that a lot of rich Democrat supporters are coming out and saying they are all for paying more. Who wouldn’t?

President Obama says you can have billions of tax dollars and I just want a kickback in the form of higher taxes so that I can keep spending recklessly. However, ask anyone of these guys to write a check to the Treasury voluntarily, and they all balk. Why? Nobody gets any credit for donating their money to the government. They want the government to take it, not just from them but from every successful business person.

An Economic Winter

If President Obama gets another term, we may face an economic winter from which we may never recover. If the last three years were painful, the next four could be even worse.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Jon Corzine, one of those very smart Wall Street guys, the former head of Goldman Sachs, testified before Congress today to answer questions as to what happened to his firm MF Global, which is now one of the largest bankruptcies in US history. There is over $1 billion unaccounted for. He simply doesn’t know where it went. This is the guy that Obama and Biden praised when they took office as the first guy they would turn to in the midst of the economic crisis. It explains a lot about where we are today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm3VMrKqJSA

It seemed that as long as Corzine sat in the cat bird seat of crony capitalism, where if your big bets pay off you rake in the dough and if they go south, you hand the bill to the taxpayers in the form of bailouts because you are too big to fail. Take him out of that role and he acts the same way, but without the safety net you see the results.

What Corzine did, after driving New Jersey into a ditch that Chris Christie is digging out of, he bet heavily on the debt of foreign countries. Oops! It seems like he believed that governments never run out of money, but sadly they do. And we will face the same fate, but who is steering our economic ship? The two guys who think Jon Corzine is brilliant. Jon Corzine is the first guy that Joe Biden and Barack Obama called upon taking office. Is there any wonder that their plan has been a disaster? Is there any wonder that no one on Wall Street has been pursued by the Justice Department? Is there any wonder that they are trying to kill the free market economy by regulating out of existence the things that people actually want to buy and heavily subsidize things that they don’t? Every day we hear a new report of more billions going into green programs that we will never see a return on.

It’s time to drop the curtain and get the hook. These clowns are not the least bit funny.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

President Obama Speaking at Solyndra

Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.

At issue is a Continuing Resolution, that is, a bill to provide temporary funding to the government. At the heart of the issue is that the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has run out of money, so there is an issue of whether to give them $3 billion more or $6 billion more. In addition the Republicans want to cut funding for such green projects like Solyndra, which just declared bankruptcy after getting a $500 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee. How heartless can those Tea Party people be to not want to send good money after bad for progressive boondoggles? But of course we should listen to Tim Bishop. After all he has been such a trusted steward of our money so far, right?

The above chart shows how much debt limit has been increased by Congress to keep the government functioning, since 1940, when it was almost zero. Tim Bishop was sworn into Congress in January of 2003, from a point where it had leveled off, the line almost goes vertical. That is eight trillion dollars in additional borrowing in just ten years in office, and he has the utter gall to say the Tea Party’s calls for restraint are unwarranted? Somebody has to do it. If Tim Bishop and Nancy Pelosi had not spent trillions of dollars that the government didn’t have, maybe we wouldn’t be quibbling over $3 billion.

Waste and Fraud

It remains to be seen if Solyndra was a massive fraud or the Democrats thinking they are really investment bankers and venture capitalists rather than elected officials, but we could have used that $500 million rather than waste it. But Bishop objects:

“Even worse, the Republican bill calls for much of that sum to be funded by cutting federal loan programs that have encouraged new job creation by U.S. automakers and clean energy manufacturers.” — e-mail message from Tim Bishop to his constituents.

$39 billion in stimulus dollars have been earmarked for green energy jobs. So far, $19 billion has been spent and 3,500 jobs have been created. That’s $5.4 million per job, people, do you think we can do better than that in the private sector? But what is a “green job?” According to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, if you drive a hybrid bus, it’s a green job, if you drive a gas-powered bus it is not a green job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1scrqqWpFlM

As one pundit put it, Washington is the only place where the circus never leaves town. This is what Congressman Bishop decries that Republicans are trying to cut. Do you think your hard-earned money is being well spent?

There is a report out today that the federal government paid about $600 million to federal workers who are DEAD! The Justice Department buys muffins for a meeting that cost $16 each! Medicare and Medicaid routinely have $60-$100 billion per stolen, and Tim Bishop has no suggestions how to cut, and even takes the time to write his constituents that, “I am sick and tired of this divisive posturing we have come to expect from the Republican Tea Party Caucus.”

I have a piece of news for you, Congressman, in case you have not been paying attention. The last Democrat who thought it would be a great idea to attack his opponent as beholden to the Tea Party was a guy named David Weprin in the 9th Congressional District of New York special election. In a district that was 3:1 Democrat registered voters, he lost big. Many Tea Party members from the heart of your district traveled on their own time and at their own expense into Brooklyn and Queens to get out the vote for Bob Turner. If you think it is a winning strategy to attack the Tea Party, I have three words for you. Bring it on.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by No Nein

President Obama has a plan to pivot toward jobs, after nearly three years on office. After spending boatloads of our money on a stimulus program that failed, according to his own standard of capping unemployment at 8%, he wants to spend more. He claims that he is also cutting spending, but when you drill down into the details, it is a myth.

We can’t cut our way out of this problem. Why not? We spent our way into it. The worst annual deficit under Bush, who was also a big spender, was $485 billion. Under Obama it has been well over a $1 trillion every year. Some say it is the fault of the Bush tax cuts, but after they were implemented, the Treasury took in more money than at any time in history. Some say it is because of the bad economy, which is a contributor, but estimates that I have seen peg the impact of the economy on revenues at around $400 billion. Is it the two wars? They were there before Obama took office, and they are there now, but we are withdrawing forces from Iraq, so what accounts for the super-sized deficit? Spending. When your family is in a tight spot, you don’t spend your way out of it, you cut back. The government has no money of its own so it sucks it out of the private sector where jobs are actually created, to do what? pump it back into the private sector? Or it prints money, which will come back to ravage the country through inflation when the economy recovers.

Let’s Be Fair

So President Obama’s plan is to “tax the rich” in the name of fairness.  Is that a real plan or a slogan? A clue to the answer to that question can be found by asking your progressive friends how much they think is fair. The response you will see is a lot of mumbling and stumbling. Stuart Varney tried vainly to get Mary Ann Marsh, a Democrat strategist, to answer that simple question, “How much is fair?” He tried multiple times and her answers excluded state taxes, and then included them later, she simply dodged the question. He kept coming at her, and she kept dodging, because any reasonable person would know that it is bunk.

Is a system where 47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes, fair? Do they not benefit from the protection of our armed forces? access to our court system? having a common currency? mail service? Elizabeth Warren, who is challenging Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, told her supporters, “nobody every got rich by themselves.” She went on to say that the roads that a businesses, travel over are paid for by “all  of us.” Apparently not. If you look at the following chart that shows the share of the tax burden carried by income level, it would appear that the “rich” are the ones paying for the roads, while Ms. Warren’s “spread the wealth around” crowd get the free ride. Yes, they want to spread the wealth around, but not the expense.

If fairness is the goal, dump the tax code and the IRS and implement a flat tax. Make it a requirement that everybody pays something, and has some skin in the game. Get rid of the loopholes and deductions so that people can file their tax returns on a post card. But if you are just reaching for a class warfare slogan in an attempt to get yourself reelected, and continue the economic nightmare we are in, not for another fifteen months but for another five years, then for once, be honest with the American people and just say so.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.

When  does the decent interval end? When does the clock run out on giving the president the benefit of the doubt and when is it time to call it as you see it, no holds barred?

President Obama is losing on all fronts. If he wants to survive he needs to do what Democrats do best, find a slogan that can be repeated mindlessly by as many adherents as possible and whip up the crowds to turn out and vote for him. If in doing so it means telling massive lies to the American people, so be it. As Saul Alinsky put it in Rules for Radicals

Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, “Does the End justify the Means?” but always has been “Does this particular end justify this particular means?”

Alinsky, Saul (2010-06-22). Rules for Radicals (p. 47). Vintage. Kindle Edition.

Think about Paul Ryan’s serious plan to get the budget under control, save Medicare and eventually balance the budget. President Obama invites Congressman Ryan to a speech about the budget, where he then mocks the plan. That is shortly followed by the commercial showing a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. Nice. What is Obama’s plan? Simple, keep everything the same, except pay doctor’s and hospitals less. Okay, let’s remember some basic economics and supply and demand. If you keep the demand constant (we’re not changing any services for seniors), but we are going to lower the price (less money for doctors and hospitals), what do you suppose will be the impact on the supply of doctors and hospitals? Yes, they will drop out of the Medicare program. So while this administration thinks it can keep from impacting seniors health care financially, it will lead to shortages and long lines. So, if grandma needs an MRI to diagnose her ailment, she may have to wait six months to get  one. Oh, you say she died in the mean time, too bad, at least she didn’t have to make a co-payment.

The Buffett Lie

The so-called Buffett rule came from billionaire Warren Buffett saying that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, and Obama has latched onto this. What better way to win the class warfare battle than to get a custom fitted fig leaf from Warren Buffett? The problem is that Warren Buffett makes most of his money from capital gains, whereas his secretary pays income taxes on her earnings. Different taxes, different rates. It is different because of the source  of the income, not the size of the income. But how was Buffett able to make a capital gain?

Capital gains come about when you buy an asset and later sell it for more than you paid for it. But where did Warren Buffett get the money to buy the asset in the first place? At some point he had to earn it. When he earned it he paid income taxes on it, the same kind of income taxes as his secretary. So he made an income and paid taxes on it. He then took what was left and invested it. While he held the investment, if it paid any dividends he would have paid taxes on the dividends, and when he finally sold it for a gain he paid capital gains taxes on the profit. So Buffett paid taxes several times on the same money, but the “Buffett Rule” only refers to the last tax he is paying. Despite being a mufti-billionaire, he only pays himself about $100,000 a year in salary, the rest is capital gains.

If Warren Buffett doesn’t like this, there are a number of things he can do to assuage his conscience without mucking up things for the rest of the economy.

1. Write a big fat check to the government, if he feels he is not paying enough in taxes. Why?
2. He could pay himself a bigger salary equal to the capital gains, he currently takes and leave the gains in his investments.
3. Structure his secretary’s compensation to match his by paying her more of her income in capital gains and less in salary.

Has the tax code become an unmanageable mess? Yes. Let’s chuck the whole thing and replace it with a flat tax. But President Obama should stop lying that the most productive job creators in the country are not taxed enough. We need them to keep their money in the private economy created more jobs, not sending it to Washington for President Obama to spend.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

President Obama laid out his jobs plan and its more of the same. Tax more. Spend more. Calling more taxes, savings and more spending, investment. Is this president incapable of learning from his mistakes or is he going “all in” for a class warfare strategy to get reelected?

But it is not just the president. Democrats in Congress are circling the wagons and backing the president to the hilt, but they are starting to get nervous. They are worried if President Obama’s ratings keep falling, they may be dragged down with him.

In the First Congressional District of New York there will be a rematch between professional politician and Democrat Tim Bishop vs. entrepreneur Randy Altschuler. Bishop was in academia before getting elected to Congress in 2002, and that represents the sum total of his career. He eventually rose through the ranks at Southampton College, but just a few years after he left, in 2005, the college closed its doors, eventually being bought by the State University of New York.

After many years of fiscal mismanagement, the University announced a multi-million dollar capital campaign, launched a new interdisciplinary CORE curriculum and the construction of a new library (almost completed) to re-vamp the campus. After one year of a 10-year plan however, Long Island University officials ceased all plans and Long Island University decided to effectively close the campus. This forced most students to either move to University’s Nassau County location, C.W. Post Campus or transfer elsewhere.

That’s not an impressive record from a Democrat who likes to blame everything on President Bush. I wonder if he apologized to his successor at Southampton College for the terrible mess he left them. Since entering Congress he has voted with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time. More than $5 trillion has been added to the national debt since Tim Bishop has been in Congress under both a Republican and a Democrat in the White House. However, with the recognition that spending has to be reined in, Bishop has given it lip service, but he cannot seem to bring himself to cut any real spending. The only thing he has seemed to offer up is closing a tax loophole on five oil companies which would close 0.2% of the current year budget deficit. With the U.S. Postal Service announcing an $8.5 billion budget deficit, Tim Bishop was out fighting to keep a superfluous post office in Setauket, NY. In addition, he voted against stopping the National Labor Relations Board from killing 2,500 jobs in South Carolina being created by Boeing. This has to stop. Tim Bishop cannot control his urge to spend, so he has to be replaced.

President Obama says we cannot cut our way out of the situation we are in. But we managed to spend our way into this mess. In Tim Bishop’s district, over $100 million of stimulus money went to school districts, who reported creating fifteen jobs. The green initiative that Obama and Bishop support has already spent $19 billion and has created only 3500 jobs; that’s $5.4 million per job! This administration guaranteed loans to a company called Solyndra, that is now bankrupt only one year after getting the loan guarantee. One of the biggest investors in Solyndra was also a campaign bundler for Obama, raising $84,000 for his presidential campaign.

Bishop’s challenger, Randy Altschuler, has created two companies and created hundreds of jobs. He decided to go into politics as he contemplated the future facing his young son. We need people in Congress who have felt the burden of trying to create jobs under the anti-business environment that exits today in America. We cannot continue to live in a fantasy world of spend, spend, spend and things will be better.

Think of a very successful company like Home Depot, which has created thousands of jobs. One of the founders of that company Bernie Marcus was recently interviewed by Neil Cavuto. Many of the suggestions he had to fix the mess we are in, have been advocated here, but they are also the very opposite of what those who are strangers to private industry are advocating, people like Barack Obama, Tim Bishop, and Chuck Schumer. We need more of the thinking and experience of those who have lived under the rules of Congress in private industry and less of those whose careers have been around telling others how to live their lives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHUREbTn0Qo

It’s time to send Tim Bishop home and put some fresh thinking and problem solving in Washington. That’s why I support Randy Altschuler.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by boss tweed

Ah, 1922, the Yankees won their second American League pennant and finished up their final season at the Polo Grounds before moving across the river to their new stadium in the Bronx. In the summer, hyperinflation in Germany meant it took 493 marks to equal one dollar. Feature length film Nanook of the North  is released. In the fall the conversion rate in Germany is 1,000 marks to the dollar. Stalin comes to power in Russia, and Mussolini in Italy. By November it takes 3,000 marks to equal one U.S. dollar in Germany. Alexander Graham Bell dies. By year-end it takes 7,000 German marks to equal one U.S. dollar. It was also the last time the 9th Congressional District in New York was held by a Republican.

Printing money was not working in Germany. In 1921, there was a deep recession in the U.S. Unemployment hit 11.7 percent, but the Republican administration did not launch any massive bailout programs nor plaster the economy with new regulations. Business owners had the freedom to react to their circumstances. They could adjust wages and prices as the market demanded. They did and as steep as the recession had been the snap back to full recovery was just as sharp. By 1922 the unemployment rate was down to 6.7% and a year later in 1923, it was down to an incredible 2.4%.

We are now in an economy under this administration where the unemployment rate started at 7.4% and has climbed and is now stuck at around 9%. It has been this way for nearly three years and the projections are that it will stay this way for years in the future, just like it was under FDR. And why not? President Obama is following many of plans of FDR that didn’t work in the 1930s and are not working now.

If a trillion in stimulus spending didn’t work, let’s spend another $500 billion, right? If passing enormous regulations such as ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, EPA, kills any business desire to hire people, blame the Republicans for saying STOP!

A message went out from New York to Washington last night. In a district with 3:1 Democrat advantage. The people voted for a Republican. A Republican who said stop the spending, support our allies, don’t destroy our social institutions and remember that all Obama’s horses and all Obama’s men and women, are not smarter than the rest of us. Get out of our way. Let us make decisions for our own lives and stand back. We, the American people, not the bureaucrats in Washington who never set foot in the private economy, like Chuck Schumer and Anthony Weiner, will turn this economy around. Give us our lives, our liberty and stop impeding our pursuit of happiness. It is our pursuit and our responsibility to catch up with our happiness. You bureaucrats cannot deliver it to us. Give not, Take not.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours; Please comment below.