CAP AND TRADE-- A HIDDEN TAX INCREASE ON ALL AMERICANS

[Get the latest Truth With Speedzzter here]

In a Wall Street Journal opinion article about President Obama's tax & spend ways (nearly $11,000.00 in spending for every person in the U.S.A.), the editorialist makes the following essential point about "cap and trade" limits on carbon emissions:

[I]t's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation.

So much for the lie that Obama and the Democrats will only confiscate more money from the top 2% of earners.

And cap and trade will cost some big coin.

The [Washington] Post cited testimony to Congress in September by Peter Orszag, currently Obama's budget director, estimating that revenue from a cap-and-trade scheme could reach 112 billion dollars by 2012.

According to Orszag, who at the time was director of the Congressional Budget Office, the program -- which would force companies to buy permits if they exceed pollution emission limits -- could generate between 50 and 300 billion dollars a year by 2020.

Cap and trade will adversely affect all automotive sectors. It will lead to inflated prices and fewer product choices. It will cut into revenues that could otherwise be used for more productive purposes. It will fuel huge increases in the size and scope of the federal government. It will dramatically increase the costs of our automotive liberty.

Cap and trade is nothing more than another tax scheme based upon the speculative, quasi-religious beliefs of an alleged "consensus" of mostly politically-motivated "scientists."

Reduced to its simplest: Cap and Trade = regressive tax on everyone.

OBAMA’S “NEIGHBORLY” SOCIALISM

[Get the latest “Truth With Speedzzter” here]

When Barack Obama’s multipart jousting with independent center-right talk show host Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Channel touched on Obama’s liberal “Robin Hood” tax increase plan, O’Reilly charged that the plan is socialist income redistribution. Obama countered that it’s “neighborly” for someone who is financially secure to give up part of their income to “a waitress” who is struggling.

BIG GOVERNMENT AS “NEIGHBOR?”

Barack Obama’s conception of being “neighborly” boils down to taking by force of law the hard-earned cash from those whom the Government determines don’t really need it (without any particularized analysis of need), laundering it through a huge, inefficient bureaucracy, and then paying a fraction of it to those who did nothing to earn it as an entitlement.

Some neighbor.

Being a neighbor used to mean voluntary association with those who lived near to you. “Neighborly” once meant “Appropriate to the relation of neighbors; friendly.”

Old-fashioned neighborliness involved personal interactions and personal decisions to help individuals we personally identified as being in temporary need.


The honest recipients of neighborly generosity have no sense of entitlement. Only gratitude for receipt of help that was freely given under the color of grace and friendship.

Neighborliness used to mean a personal relationship.

But in Barack Obama’s liberal world, “neighborly” means taking that money a small business person has set aside for investing in new tools and equipment or to hire additional employees and giving it by force over to some stranger who did nothing to deserve it.

“Neighborly” in Obama-speak means forcing grieving families to liquidate their family businesses upon the death of their industrious matriarchs or patriarchs to share the assets with a thirsty federal bureaucracy and a group of underachieving strangers.

“Neighborly” in Obama’s socialist mind amounts to subsidizing a huge class of permanent adolescents with an “allowance” from their big federal “mama,” paid for by those workers and investors who already shoulder the vast majority of the cost for our bloated government.

Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed agent of “Change” (who incidentally votes the Democrat party line 97% of the time) certainly has a distorted concept of what it means to be “neighborly.” And apparently, April 15 is the most “neighborly” day of the year among the covetous Obama-ians.

Undoubtedly Barack Obama’s ideas for a super-sized federal government as “neighbor” are derived from the lessons of Chicago-Style machine politics and filtered through the liberal United Church of Christ social gospel Obama heard for years from the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The Chicago machine traditionally followed the Tammany Hall model of “spreading the graft” around to those who “need” it in order to buy the votes necessary to stay in power.

Tammany Hall bosses (we could call them “community organizers” in today’s politically correct vernacular) organized and policed immigrant communities, secured patronage jobs for the truly “deserving,” and even parceled out valuable goods and services. All these community organizing “bosses” wanted in return was unquestioned loyalty on election day.

Liberals in the Twentieth Century institutionalized and partially nationalized this “Robin Hood” model in the modern, urban welfare state. Instead of building a system that encouraged and rewarded personal responsibility, delayed gratification, self-sacrifice to get ahead, and personal industry, the big urban political machines created a system of dependency, patronage and public subsidy of irresponsible behavior.

Obama’s vaunted “community organizer” experience was based on facilitating this urban liberal redistributionist model.

Obama’s chosen Christian denomination, the United Church of Christ, claims:

Jesus was a low-wage worker, just like too many workers in the U.S. today. Nurses aides, hotel housekeepers, farm workers, day laborers, early childcare specialists, fast food workers, retail sales clerks, and custodians are examples of workers who provide needed services but who usually receive wages so low that they cannot keep a family out of poverty.

However, instead of encouraging people to turn off the TV, put down the bottle and the crack pipe, train and study hard, delay unnecessary luxuries, discipline themselves, and work their way out of entry-level jobs into something better, Obama’s liberal United Church of Christ favors discarding any pretense of personal industry and the free market for labor by replacing it with big government programs to make such low skill, entry-level jobs financially attractive as life-long careers.

In other words, they want forced conscription of money from those who have earned it and redistribution to those whom the free market says haven’t.

Already, the bottom fifty percent of taxpayers pay less than three percent of tax revenues. But exempting these folks from government-coerced “neighborliness” isn’t enough. Obama, according to the sparing with O’Reilly, wants to send millions of these people an unearned check.

Apparently these “gift” recipients don’t need the “civic pride” of supporting the federal system, except as greedy parasites.

Who pays for this?

America’s small businesses, ranches and farms. America’s entrepreneurs. America’s hard-working professionals. America’s risk-taking investors. America’s wealth creators.

In other words, the same people who already fund over three-quarters of the federal government.

Ultimately, these government-imposed costs of doing business are passed on to the middle class in the form of higher prices, reduced service and reduced quality.

And by some estimates, Obama’s tax increase could be as much as one trillion dollars too small to fund the grandiose plans he has for our new national “neighborhood.”

The left often decries the dangers of “theocracy.” Indeed, fifty-five liberal preachers, mostly from Obama’s own left-wing United Church of Christ, have filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service to threaten and coerce conservatives from speaking out on moral issues from the pulpit. Ostensibly, this anti-First Amendment hectoring is aimed at preventing the morality of traditional Christianity from influencing secular politics.

But the very same left seeks to enforce some sort of “brothers’s keeper” “neighborliness” with other people’s money. And the very same United Church of Christ denomination has at times welcomed Barack Obama into the pulpits of their churches to spread his partisan message of wealth redistribution and big government.

Pardon some taxpayers if they would expect a “theocracy” would be better and more fair than Obama-mania. Under the biblical legal system, only a tenth of one’s income was payable as “the tithe.” Under Obama’s dream, some taxpayers will be forced to split the results of their labors fifty/fifty with an insatiable government.

Is taking half of someone’s money “neighborly?”

Or is it just plain, old-fashioned socialism.

The voters in November will make the call.

OBAMA & BIDEN: THE “DREAM KILLERS”

[Get the latest TRUTH WITH SPEEDZZTER Here]

In a couple of months (barring a reprise of the “Sore-Loserman” sour grapes litigation of 2000) we will know which presidential nominee has the uncertain fate of U.S Constitution, Detroit's automakers and our shrinking automotive liberties in his hands.

The choice is about as stark as any now possible in the American two-party system.

On one hand, is Barack Obama and his old, plagiarizing, inside-Washington side kick Joe Biden. On the other is the battle-tested maverick John McCain and the refreshing "real world" conservative supermom Sarah Palin.

Obama is riding in as this year’s designated “progressive” in a cult of personality which is wholly out of proportion to anything he’s ever accomplished anywhere in his life.

His quest for office isn’t a mere campaign. It’s a “movement.”

[Some conservatives will have to be forgiven if they interlineated the word “bowel” before “movement”]

He claims to be some sort of post-partisan agent of “change.”

(Of course getting hit by a bus would be a "change" for most of us . . . "Change" isn't necessarily a good thing)

But, signing on to a couple of minor bills is hardly the record of a legendary bipartisan legislative leader.

At least he didn’t merely ad to his impressive and courageous total of “present” votes, though.

And other than running his mouth (almost non-stop) in a protracted campaign for the presidency, what has Obama (apparently known to some as the Messianic Mulatto) ever actually run?

Oh! He did find a few typos on the liberal “Haaa-vard” Law Review . . . .

And there’s that resume bulking “community organizer” job . . . .

“ But he's never run a city, never run a state, never run a business.
He's never had to lead people in crisis.
This is not a personal attack....it's a statement of fact - Barack Obama has never led anything.
Nothing. Nada.” – Rudolph Giuliani

Perhaps a fitting sobriquet would be “Zerobama” (as in ZERO EXPERIENCE).

And as for being a “community organizer” . . . Speedzzter’s been to south Chicago . . . and it doesn’t look much like he finished the job . . . .

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” Gov. Sarah Palin

Lack of experience aside, the motley and freakish collection of special interests, perpetual victims and “nutroots” activists that make up the Democrat party’s primary voters apparently saw Obama as better able to recover the imaginary “Camelot” of past Democratic eras than that certain shrill, female, coat-tail-riding proxy for Bill Clinton known as Hillary.

Obama is one of the greatest beneficiaries of mindless, kneejerk "affirmative action" racial identity politics in American history.

Had he not been a glib and telegenic African-American (or more accurately a half African-American), he would not be anywhere near the U.S. Presidency at this point in his fledgling political career. However, he has attracted about 90% of the primary votes cast by those in the Democrat party who believe that the color of one’s skin and not the content of one’s character is the relevant factor in selecting a president.

A candidate's race, of course, ought to have absolutely no role in the selection of any elected or appointed leader. However, the liberal fixation on the demographic composition of the GOP convention, for example, is a strong indicator that Democrat leaders simply do not agree with this core American principle. Obama's dramatic ascendency sans any real qualifications is another.

Obama’s other major base of support comes from those who are obsessed with losing the war in Iraq.

Anyone with a memory of more than a couple of seconds is aware that Obama has run consistently hard for defeat and surrender in Iraq and has rhetorically opposed anything that would “escalate” our chances to win.

He won’t even admit he was stone-cold wrong on the troop surge.

Notwithstanding years of demoralizing, hyper-partisan and often misleading rhetoric against the Iraq War, some claim Obama only voted once to defund it and only because his hand was forced by the wily GOP as a procedural matter. However, the fact that he was too busy campaigning to show up for votes does not diffuse the valid observations of Joe Lieberman about “Zerobama’s” gelding positions on winning at the major beachhead in the War Against Radical Islamofascism.

When Zero did show up, he amassed the most liberal voting record of any currently sitting U.S. Senator.

Still, while some anticipate Obama as some sort of a new age liberal (a/k/a “progressive”) who can sell (without any partisan rancor whatsoever in a new, imaginary post-partisan age) a sharply divided country on all of the old, big government schemes and scams on the shelf since the days of LBJ’s “Great Society, ” others seem to view Obama as some sort of a reincarnation of the almost-moderate Clinton Administration. Balanced budgets and dot.com prosperity are just around the corner . . . .

Of course all of that assumes a highly revisionist view of the Bill Clinton era.

For example, the federal budget was balanced (on paper) despite Clinton and AFTER the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. It was a direct result of the Democrat losses in the 2004 mid-term elections and of the GOP’s “Contract With America.” (Admittedly, once Newt Gingrich was gone and Tom Delay took over, the GOP Congress lost its discipline on spending) The budget was balanced, in part, by rejecting the very sorts of big government initiatives and redistributionist handouts "Zerobama" favors (i.e. federalizing/socializing the health care system, soaking small business owners and small investors with a huge tax increase)

Obama-ism seeks to undo the bulk of the favorable economic policies which survived the Clinton era and replace them with disincentives to investment, protectionist trade restrictions, vast and expensive regulations on commercial activity and energy production/usage.

The salient lesson from the 2006 election has been lost on young Zero as well. A fair plurality of American voters are tired of wasting billions in federal tax money – which is money extorted by force of law from productive Americans -- on pork-barrel crap like nature trails, Woodstock cultural centers and overpriced bridges with minimal traffic counts.

However, because the Democrat political model is STILL based on Tammany Hall-style inducements to special interests (to which Tom Delay misled the GOP to adopt and George W. Bush failed to police with his veto pen before the 2006 election debacle), real earmark reform still hasn’t occurred.

Obama’s laundry list of “change” proposals suggests he will further balloon federal spending with more “targeted” pork (cash rewards for political loyalty) and expensive new “entitlements” (government-mandated wealth redistribution). It’s a solid lock that a former ACORN “community organizer” is going to be free with doling out the hand-outs that he undoubtedly coveted when he was just “Barry” on the south side of Chicago.

“Nobama’s” tax plan is even worse.

It will increase taxes over John McCain’s plan by NINE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS according to the non-partisan Urban Institute. Zerobama’s plan will increase marginal rates by nearly 15% on those who already pay over 90% of the revenue from gross federal income taxes. It will increase the rate on corporations by one-third over the McCain’s plan.

Obama’s tax plan will result in a huge tax increase on millions of small businesses, sole proprietorships, family enterprises and individual investors because it fails to preserve the bulk of the 2001 tax cuts. Because these heavy taxpayers simply cannot print additional money to pay more, these Obama tax increases, in a majority of cases, will be passed on through increased prices, reduced investments, reduced consumption and reduced hiring. The corresponding increases in transfer payments and other big government spending will not produce as much of a multiplier effect as leaving this same money in the private sector to begin with.

Obama doesn’t just limit the interference of big government to taxation. For example, Obama has said

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our houses on 72 degrees at all times . . . That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”

In other words, Obama’s brand of "progress" portends regulation of almost every area of personal freedom, except of course those areas of sexual morality and dangerous substance abuse which have traditionally been regulated for both didactic purposes and the public good.

Obama is arguably the most dangerous choice for president in recent memory because he is an anti-constitutional, big government socialist who is limp-wristed on national defense, mostly hostile to the fundamental right of armed personal self-defense and private property rights, wholly lacking in understanding of private initiative and entrepreneurial values, openly beholden to scores of liberal special interests, and devoid of the ideological resolve to protect our fragile national sovereignty from being co-opted by international government.

Compared to that, Bill Clinton was just an egotistical opportunist with a bad Southern accent and an overactive libido.

Obama’s hypnotic set-piece propaganda speeches often mention the theme of “enabling dreams.”

Yet Obama and Biden are actually dreamkillers.

If you dream of finally purchasing a new, high-performance V8 musclecar, sports car or the SUV of your choice, the radical Obama-Biden increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy and obsequious fealty to the anti-oil environmental crowd will kill that dream.

If you dream of a Supreme Court that will read the Constitution as written and not make it up as they go, Obama’s anticipated two appointments to the Court will kill that dream.

If you dream of a robust individual rights of self-protection and sport through small arms ownership, Obama-Biden’s revival of intrusive gun control will kill that dream.

If you dream of hunting, four-wheeling or snowmobiling on public lands, Obama-Biden’s “don’t tread” land management policies will kill that dream.

If you dream of a state-by-state political resolution of the “right to life” controversy instead of a Court-imposed, taxpayer-subsidized nationwide abortion industry, Obama-Biden’s judicial appointments and hyper-phobia of common-sense regulations will kill that dream.

If you dream of a military that is not weakened by the forced social engineering of the radical homosexual rights movement, Obama-Biden’s policy of open, forced acceptance and subsidy of the “gay agenda” will kill that dream.

If you dream of the freedom to maintain the centuries-old traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, Obama-Biden’s refusal to permit a Federal Marriage Amendment will kill that dream.

If you dream of the opportunity to build a small business without the crippling parasitic burdens of trial lawyer piracy, intrusive regulations and confiscatory rates of taxation, Obama-Biden’s neo-socialist redistributionist schemes will kill that dream.

If you dream of a free market of ideas on the radio, television and internet, Obama-Biden’s return to the discredited and unfair “fairness doctrine” will kill that dream.

If you dream of meaningfully increasing domestic gas and oil production and refining capacity and safe and clean nuclear electric power, Obama-Biden’s environmental policies will kill that dream.

If you dream of a free market-based health care system, Obama-Biden’s bureaucratic, de facto nationalization of the health care system will kill that dream.

If you dream of responsible tort reform and common-sense limits on “jackpot justice” and trial lawyer piracy, Obama-Biden’s judiciary packed with liberal former trial lawyers and refusal to cross the trial lawyers who have funded much of the Democrat party will kill that dream.

If you dream of peace with honor in the Middle East and unflinching support of our dear ally Israel, Obama-Biden’s cut-and-run isolationist military strategy will kill that dream.

If you dream of the opportunity to compete and trade in the world marketplace, Obama-Biden’s protectionism will kill that dream.

If you dream of low income parents having a real choice to move their kids from failing public schools and into the same sorts of private schools that elite Democrat politicians often use, Obama-Biden’s wholesale rejection of vouchers and school choice will kill that dream.

If you dream of public schools that don’t circumvent parental and religious teachings on sexual abstinence before marriage and the illegitimacy of homosexual conduct, Obama-Biden’s liberal, “values-neutral, ”graphic “how-to” sex education mandates will kill that dream.

If you dream of real border security without amnesty immigration lawbreakers, Obama-Biden’s immigration policy will kill that dream.

If you dream of the free exercise of religion in the public square and freedom of public religious expression, Obama-Biden’s packing of the federal judiciary with liberal, ACLU-type haters of religion and hostility to legislative protections will kill that dream.

If you believe in the constitutional principle of federalism, Obama-Biden’s massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy and federal role in local issues will kill that dream.

If you believe in the principle of free private association for legitimate economic and business matters and the corresponding principle of the freedom not to associate, Obama-Biden’s policy of forced acceptance and subsidy of homosexual and unmarried sexual conduct will kill that dream.

If you dream of free market solutions to the “energy crisis,” Obama-Biden’s managed (government controlled) energy economy with draconian limits on greenhouse gas emissions, oil drilling, shale oil production and other artificial limitations will kill that dream.

If you dream of an “American Autobahn” someday, or unfettered sport boating, motor racing and sport aviation, Obama-Biden’s draconian energy use policies will kill that dream.

If you dream of a summer gas tax holiday to promote tourism and economic growth in a time of high fuel prices, Obama-Biden’s rejection of that proposal will kill that dream.

If you dream of more competitive “right to work” opportunities, Obama-Biden’s increased unionization policies will kill that dream.

If you dream of the freedom to contract for market-based fringe benefits, Obama-Biden’s unfunded federal mandates for increased fringe benefits will kill that dream.

If you dream of common-sense amendments to and reasonable enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Obama-Biden’s demand for increased federal intervention in this area will kill that dream.

If you dream of reasonable capital gains taxation, Obama-Biden’s “soak the rich” tax policy and increase in the capital gains tax will kill that dream.

If you dream of passing your family business down to your children, Obama-Biden’s “death tax” policy will kill that dream.

If you dream of maintaining American sovereignty without interference from international law, Obama-Biden’s penchant for freedom-killing UN initiatives and international treaties will kill that dream.

If you dream of a smaller, less intrusive government that lives within its means, Obama-Biden’s old-fashioned “higher taxes and more spending” mentality will kill that dream.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are dreamkillers. Plain and simple.

The only real hope to protect the dreams of ordinary Americans is to vote for McCain-Palin.


The preceeding is commentary protected by the First Amendment and is not paid for or sponsored by any candidate or political party. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

McCAIN'S CASE AGAINST ROMNEY: "ROMNEY WAS FOR IT BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT"

I couldn't have said it better than this:

"Mitt Romney's campaign is based on the wholesale deception of voters. On every one of the issues he has attacked John McCain on, Romney was for it before he was against it."

"He was for campaign finance reform, and even proposed taxing political contributions."

"He was for cap and trade, and even supported a tax that increased the price of gasoline at the pump."

"He called our immigration bill 'reasonable' and 'not amnesty.'"

"The truth is, Mitt Romney was a liberal governor of Massachusetts who raised taxes, imposed with Ted Kennedy a big government mandate health care plan** that is now a quarter of a billion dollars in the red, and managed his state's economy incompetently, leaving Massachusetts with less job growth than 47 other states."

**ROMNEY'S HEALTH CARE TAX

Here's another tax increase that the Romney-ians won't tell you about:

"The AP (1/1, LeBlanc) reported that beginning Tuesday, 'most [Massachusetts] residents who remain uninsured will face monthly fines that could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of 2008, according to penalty guidelines unveiled by the Department of Revenue on Monday.' Additionally, those 'who failed to sign up for health insurance by the end of 2007 faced only a one-time loss of their $219 personal income tax exemption.' The new fines are part of healthcare legislation "approved by lawmakers and signed by former Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in 2006."

"According to the Boston Globe (1/1, Krasner), the new penalties may 'quadruple compared with the maximum penalty in 2007.'"

NOT CONSERVATIVE!

THE MOST CONSERVATIVE CHOICE IS Governor MIKE HUCKABEE!

"TAX HIKE" MITT?

More grassroots researchers are drilling down into the flaccid record of the GOP’s Gucci Chameleon – Willard Mitt Romney.

Screaming up the charts at Real Clear politics is an "apples-to-apples" analysis of the speed in which "Mitt the Flip" hiked taxes in his single term as Massachusetts governor.

And "Granny T" has provided the following "Tax Freedom Day" comparison of Mitt’s and Huck's records:

"Mike is the proven consistent pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-gun rights candidate. He has the most political executive experience. Huckabee has been termed [unfairly by the Romney-ians and the GOP country-clubbers], 'Tax hike Mike.'

Let’s compare taxes to taxes.

Huckabee terms in Arkansas:

Huckabee was sworn in July 15, 1996.

. . .

[Arkansas] Tax freedom day 1996: April 21

1997: April 22

2007: April 22

Romney term in Massachusetts:
[MA] Tax freedom day 2003: April 21

2007: May 6

This information is from "Tax Freedom Day by State, 1970-2007" at the Tax Foundation website.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22328.html

Mike left Arkansas with a huge surplus.

Mitt left Massachusetts with a huge deficit.

Mike left Arkansas with a majority approval rate.

Mitt left with a majority disapproval rate.

Yet, we're supposed to believe Mitt is more electable? . . . Huck gives us more for our buck."