by Bill O'Connell on February 5, 2009
We heard President Obama say pretty starkly that the enormous Wall Street bonuses were outrageous. While I stop short of government dictating compensation to private businesses, I do put the Wall Street clowns in the same category of the Big Three auto CEOs flying to Washington in their private jets looking for handouts. Very bad form.
The more I pondered the idea of salary caps, whether they were fair or not, whether it was government taking away another liberty, it finally hit me, that this just might work. So I now propose a salary cap, on the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. And why not?
Who Got Us Into This Mess?
It was the housing bubble that triggered the financial debacle. What drove the housing bubble? Let’s start with Fannie and Freddie. They were created by Congress. Next came the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to make riskier housing loans. Next the Clinton Administration under the direction of Janet Reno, drove the banks harder to make more housing loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Then was the Federal Reserve that kept interest rates too low for too long. And right up until the end we had Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd saying all was well with Fannie and Freddie.
We have Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee responsible for writing the tax laws, cheats on his income taxes.
Bernie Madoff runs a Ponzi scheme that bilks people out of $50 billion while a guy named Markopolis figured the whole thing out in five minutes and spent the last nine years trying to get someone in government to care.
The government imposes CAFE standards on the auto industry and drives them to the brink of bankruptcy and then says we have to bail them out.
Now they are proposing a “stimulus” package that is just a bunch of pork.
Solution
So I propose that we, their employers, cap their salaries at $100,000 (from their current $162,500) until such time as they fix this mess. I further propose that if a congressman/woman can prove that they didn’t vote for any of the crap that got us into this mess, that they be exempt from the cap.
What say you?
by Bill O'Connell on January 31, 2009
President Barack Obama
“Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game,” is what Casey Stengel reportedly said while watching his team, the New York Mets. The same could be said of the Democrats when it comes to paying taxes. The Democrats are the ones who rail against tax cuts for the rich. They don’t believe in lower tax rates to stimulate the economy, but if these wealthy Democrats find taxes problematic, they just don’t pay them.
We now hear of another nominee, Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader, has a $140,000 tax problem. $140,000! Most Americans would like to make that in income, let alone owe that in taxes. This follows on the heels of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner paying back taxes of $34,000 and Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that writes the tax laws, paying $10,800 in back taxes. We’d probably have a balanced budget if all these rich Democrats only paid the taxes they owe rather than fighting against tax cuts for everyone.
Here’s Daschle’s excuse for his tax problem:
“Mr. Daschle told committee staff that he had grown used to having a car and driver as Senate majority leader and didn’t think to report the perquisite on his taxes, according to staff members.”
Two things come glaringly into view here. First is the overall arrogance that these “public servants” feel they deserve privilege. They have no concept that in the real world not everyone has a car and driver provided by their employer. In this case the employer is all the Joe Sixpacks out there. The second thing is that these problems were discovered and fixed, in the cases of Daschle and Geithner, only after they were nominated for positions in Obama’s cabinet. So, what if they weren’t nominated? Do you think that this tax revenue that is legally owed to the government (you and me) would still be in their pockets?
We have the chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws failing to pay his taxes. We have the Treasury Secretary who oversees the Internal Revenue Service failing to pay his taxes. We have the former Senate Majority Leader who ran the senate that passes all laws failing to pay his taxes. Do you think it’s too hard to figure out how to comply with our tax code?
It’s time to scrap the tax code and go to a simple flat tax that you can file your return on a post card. Let’s put the $200 billion that Americans spend each year on tax compliance back into the economy. Let’s make sure that all these rich Democrats pay the taxes they owe. Do these two things and we probably won’t need a stimulus package.
by Bill O'Connell on January 14, 2009
It couldn’t be more clear that the Obama administration should immediately begin the conversion from our convoluted tax code, to a flat tax that could be filed on a post card. How can I make such a claim?
Well, Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that writes the tax laws, seems to have forgotten to pay his income taxes on a villa that he owns in the Dominican Republic. More recently we learn that Timothy Geithner, Obama’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary, didn’t pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years. The Treasury Department includes the Internal Revenue Service which enforces the tax laws that Mr. Rangel’s Committee writes and collects the money.
So if the tax laws are so complicated that the individual in charge of writing the tax laws cannot understand them enough to follow them, and they are so complicated that the individual in charge of enforcing those tax laws, doesn’t understand what he is charged with enforcing, don’t you think it’s time we simplified the tax laws? If these highly educated, very experienced, extremely intelligent people cannot comply with the tax code, what hope does the average Joe have? Perhaps that is why it is estimated we spend $200 billion per year in tax compliance. Couldn’t that money be more productively be employed elsewhere in the economy?
What do you think?
