Socialist Liberal-Progressive Democrats Attack America
British banks revolt against Obama tax plan
British banks and stockbrokers may refuse to take on American clients if new international
tax proposals outlined by President Obama are passed.
By Louise Armitstead Telegraph.co.uk
The decision, which would make it hard for Americans in London to open bank accounts and trade shares, is being
discussed by executives at Britain's banks and brokers who say it could become too expensive to service American clients.
The proposals, which were unveiled as part of the president's first budget, are designed to clamp-down on American tax evaders
abroad. However bank bosses say they
are being asked to take on the task of collecting American taxes at a cost and legal liability that are inexpedient.
Andy Thompson of Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers (APCIMS) said: "The cost
and administration of the US tax regime is causing UK investment firms to consider disinvesting in US shares on behalf of
their clients. This is not right and emphasises that the administration of a tax regime on a global scale without any flexibility
damages the very economy it is trying to protect."
One executive at a top UK bank who didn't want to be named for fear of angering the IRS said: "It's just about
manageable under the current system - and that's because we're big. The danger to us is suddenly being hauled over the coals
by the IRS for a client that hasn't paid proper taxes. The audit costs will soar. We'll have to pay it but I know plenty of
smaller players won't."
The British Bankers Association (BBA) and APCIMS had a meeting with European counterparts 10 days ago to discuss
the crisis. A delegation is set to meet the US Treasury's Internal Revenue Service on 16th June to demand they drop the reforms.
Ahead of the meeting APCIMS, whose members manage £400bn of Britain's wealth and employ 25,000 people, has sent
a letter to the IRS complaining that the "unfair" proposals represent "no benefit but... significant cost" to its members.
President Obama's proposals are built on the so-called Qualified Intermediary system which was intended to ensure
Americans paid the correct tax wherever they were domiciled. Foreign financial institutions that handle American money have
to fill in a US tax form on behalf of the client that has to be audited too. In return, the banks receive a QI seal of approval
as a qualified intermediary.
Obama Attacks America
What the current President is doing in denigrating our own
country in the faces of world leaders is despicable. After being chastized by communist dictators about how they've been treated
in the past by the United States, his response to these tyrants and massive violators of civil liberties was absolutely chilling:
"We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms," Obama said to loud applause. "But
I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations."
He also added, mockingly, for comic relief: “I
am very grateful that President Ortega didn’t blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Headlines and Opinion You Won't Get In The MSM
Item #1
This Is The Socialism That's Headed For America
The politics behind Britain’s tax changes are ugly. The economics are worse
From The Economist print edition
JEAN-BAPTISTE COLBERT, Louis XIV’s finance minister, famously said that the art of taxation was like plucking
a goose; the aim was to get the most feathers with the least hissing. But tax policy should aim to do more than smother protest:
it should also seek to raise the most money with the least distortion to economic activity.
By this measure, Britain’s attempts to fill the fiscal gulf created by recession are a dismal failure
and a lesson to cash-strapped governments everywhere. Take marginal income tax rates, announced in the British budget of April
22nd. Once national insurance is added in, effective marginal rates will climb from 31.5% to 41.5% through to 61.5% on those
earning just over £100,000 ($147,000), thanks to the withdrawal of the personal tax allowance. After that, the rate will fall
back to 41.5%, before rising again to 51.5% on incomes over £150,000.
The bizarre incentives of income tax are only the start. High earners also face the withdrawal of tax relief
on their own pension contributions and a tax charge on the “benefit-in-kind” provided by employers’ payments
into their schemes. Depending on how much the employer contributes, this will push marginal rates well above 50%. It will
also discriminate against employees in defined-contribution, or money-purchase, schemes where employers match what workers
put in. But the effect is not uniform; the convoluted rules will mean some high earners will get more tax relief on their
contributions than they did before. What a mess.
As recently as 2006, the government drove through a reform of the pensions rules that simplified a notoriously
complex system. Employees could, in effect, make pensions contributions when they felt flush and still get tax relief. Those
reforms were a much-needed incentive for employees to build up their pensions at a time when many employers were abdicating
responsibility for providing a decent income in retirement. The new rules return pensions to the complexity of string theory.
The best tax systems combine low rates with minimal exemptions. Businesses and citizens should be making decisions
based on their economic opportunities, not the advice of their accountants. But Gordon Brown is too clever by half. He introduced
a sliding scale that made capital-gains tax highly complex, and then reversed himself, introducing a single rate of 18%. The
effect was both to raise the tax rates for sellers of small businesses and to introduce a vast discrepancy between the tax
rates on capital and income. An attempt to introduce a levy on foreign workers (known as non-doms) was botched, and may yet
drive many high-earners out of the country.
These wheezes were designed chiefly with politics in mind: all those nasty plutocrats deserved a hammering.
By putting economics second, Mr Brown has made it harder to balance the books. Waste and lower growth because of poor tax
policy will only make the fiscal hole harder to fill. The new tax will do little to reduce Britain’s budget deficit.
On the government’s own forecasts, which assume the wealthy will not change their behaviour, the assault on the rich
will raise just £7 billion. With avoidance, the tax will raise still less.
Brown’s goose cooked
Although higher taxes would be a mistake in a recession, they are inevitable when growth returns. The rich should
pay their share, but governments cannot repair their finances merely by plugging holes or using stealth taxes. The sums are
too great. They will have to raise money from the majority of citizens and they should do so in a clear and open fashion.
The aim should be to reform and broaden the tax base. During the boom, the British government became too dependent
on financial services, raking in money from income taxes on bonuses, capital-gains taxes on rising share prices or corporation
taxes on bank profits. One reason its deficit has risen so quickly is that those revenues have evaporated. They may not return
again for some time.
Governments will need new sources of revenue, just as value-added tax, introduced in Britain in the 1970s, became
a counterpart to income tax. Carbon taxes are one possibility. The lingering tax privileges of residential property could
also go. The need is for decisive action, rather than fiddling. Meanwhile, the Treasury says that it is still “consulting”
on the new pension rules. It should consult the book of common sense.
The Reason the Left Must Destroy the
USA
BySher Zieve
In order for global (AKA “one world”) government (AKA “rule”) to come
into being, the United States of America must be destroyed. The USA and its Constitution are far too dangerous to the
totalitarian Left for it to allow the country to continue its existence. For many years now, I have included in my Bio
“if Leftists ran the country (and left to their own inane devices), it would be the end of the United States as a sovereign
nation.” Unfortunately and tragically, I was—and still am—correct.
The United States Constitution is a document that was designed and implemented to severely restrict
government interference and control over individual states and We-the-People. The current US Federal Administration—under
the rule of Barack Obama—is now operating under its leaders’ stated agenda of redistributing wealth (which is
taken from the middle class and “redistributed” to the US and Global political power elite) and establishing new
laws to take the US Constitution from limiting control over the US population to total control over We-the-People. Thus
far, with very few exceptions, not one of the ‘loyal opposition’ has truly tried to stop Obama. Instead,
they seem to dutifully accept his programs that are tearing America apart—in favor of the global secular New World Order
(NWO). This NWO will consist of—but not be limited to—the following for the USA:
Massive energy tax increases of at least an additional $1,800/year/family
Higher prices for all goods and services
Total government control of the media (See Rosa Brooks “news” bail out proposal)
Total government control of the entire financial industry (money will go to Obama and leftist supporters and
be withheld from those who oppose them)
The end of free speech (US state police have already been apprised by the Obama administration’s DHS
Chief Napolitano that all who hold conservative or third party viewpoints are to be considered ‘enemies of the state’)
Abortions on demand
Infanticide for failed abortions (Note: Obama voted four times in opposition to a law that would have
protected babies who are left to die after a failed abortion)
Total government control of ALL industries Obama et al deem “essential” (which is subject to change
at a moment’s notice)
The end to small business unless it supports the Left
The end of the middle class—as Obama and Co and the globalists will have gutted the country’s
treasury and placed US taxpayer money in their own pockets
The criminalization of all political thought that is deemed non-supportive of the Left
The rescinding of Amendment 22 to end presidential term limits
The prosecution of President George W. Bush for protecting the country against terrorists (in order to distract
the masses from what Supreme Leader Obama and Co are really doing)
The elevation of terrorists to a protected class (Islamists soon to be the global power elite’s Secret
Police force?)
Forced taxpayer funding for illegal immigrants
The dismantling of the US’ southern border
Major drug dealers covertly partnering with government
These are just a few of the stark horrors that are forthcoming—or have already arrived
at our doorstep. Without a real revolution can they be stopped? You will need to answer that question for yourself.
Item #2
Editorial Cartoons by Eric Allie
Editorial Cartoons by Jerry Holbert
Rush Quote of the Day
Rush Limbaugh:
"Understand something about liberals: they never stop until they get what they want, and when they get what they want, it's
still never enough."
Last Tuesday, as President Obama got off the Helicopter in front of the White House, he was carrying a
baby piglet under each arm. The squared away Marine guard snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Nice
pigs, Sir."
The President replies: "These are not pigs. These are authentic Arkansas Razorback Hogs. I got one for
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I got one for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi .."
The squared away Marine
again snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Excellent trade, sir.
According to reports, President Barack Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify a
combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days. Just how laughable is Obama’s latest stunt to try to maintain
his “fiscal responsibility” credentials? This graphic from Heritage’s John Fleming might help:
Harvard University economics professor Greg Mankiw’s comments:
To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone
in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be
cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put
that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.”
Report: Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At
Congressional Hearing
'House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated'
Climate Depot Exclusive - Updated
By Marc Morano
Washington,
DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al
Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depotthat the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy
and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when
his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.
“The House
Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”
According to Monckton,
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and
testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S.
on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance.
Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing
will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.
According to Monckton,
House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity'
as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The "celebrity" witness
turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats' "celebrity" with an unnamed "celebrity"
of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him
to testify alongside Gore.
[ Update: 1:55 PM EST: A
GOP House source told Climate Depot that the Democrats on the Committee said “absolutely not”
to allowing Monckton to appear during today's Gore hearing. The GOP committee “pushed at multiple levels” to bring
Monckton in to testify but the Democrats “refused,” according to the GOP source. Former GOP House Speaker Newt
Gingrich was called in to testify after Monckton was rejected by the committee Democrats, according to the Congressional source.]
“The Democrats
have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose
Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,”
Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.
“The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most
admire. He joined our party because the Democrats inJim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans
did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.
“I joined for different reasons. I found a party
that sees me as an individual, not as part of a group. I found a party that puts family first. I found a party that has love
of liberty at its core. And I found a party that believes that peace begins with strength.”
“It’s that expression of the individual
and a willingness to put the educational opportunities before me that led to who I am. Who you are is who you are as an individual.”
“Hope is making a comeback, and let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am
proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but because I think people are hungry for change,” stated
Michelle Obama recently.
At first it seemed as though the Obama family just hadn’t adjusted to being in the national
spotlight and as such simply didn’t realize in that unforgiving glare every nuance of what they say will be highlighted
and held against them politically.
Liberal Democrats are notorious for pandering to their constituency groups where
there is no universal policy statement but a cut-and-paste platform of rhetoric that is tied specifically to a certain cause
or group or area of the country and the campaign speeches they give change from day to day based on who they are addressing.
As
a quick aside here, liberals and their media counterparts charge Conservative Republicans with ‘pandering’ to
certain groups yet never show that the message of their ideological principle never changes from one place to the next…
it’s always the same, group to group, city to city, state to state.
But then more information started to trickle
out about the things the Obamas have been saying, some of which goes back to their college years and suddenly it became clear
that they know exactly what it is they are saying and are not concerned about it being highlighted for everyone to see.
When
Michelle Obama made that statement… and repeated it on the campaign trail… she was not concerned about any negative
impact it may have had on her husband’s campaign because she was doing little more than reiterating a belief that all
liberals have pontificated over time.
Which is history doesn’t matter to them. All that matters to liberals is
the here and now. Every day for liberals starts anew with no past baggage and no historical precedent to follow.
When
Mrs. Obama said ‘for the first time in my adult life’ she literally meant ‘starting today’. In liberal
speak you’ve heard this same sentiment expressed many times before, but most people aren’t focused enough on the
political realm to catch it.
The way liberals have expressed it in the past is, ‘what have you done for me lately?’
Commentators
have challenged her contention by supplying a laundry list of historical events that have literally changed mankind and directed
them to a better way of life, but none of that matters because it didn’t directly affect her… in her world view…
and is now in the past so it has become inconsequential.
A perfect example of this was presented by Mrs. Obama in her
senior thesis at Princeton University where she wrote, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness'
than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates
try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances
under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student
second."
Sounds eerily similar to ‘for the first time in my adult life’ doesn’t it?
This
is classic pandering. Here is an African-American female who has been afforded an opportunity that only a select number of
human beings have had the honor of accomplishing and instead of recognizing that profound feat and what it meant to have been
able to do it, she has to pander out of what one can only register as guilt.
This is exclusive to liberals, folks.
Hillary Clinton is doing it now saying, “A lot of women project their own feelings and their lives on to me, and they
see how hard this is. It's hard. It's hard being a woman out there.”
Michelle Obama admits that her ‘white’
professors and classmates were ‘liberal and open-minded’ towards her and Hillary Clinton admits that she is the
first female to win a presidential primary, yet both of these liberals claim to not see the positive accomplishment in their
endeavor and use the occasions to do nothing more than pander to the masses for some sort of misguided sympathy.
You’ve
never heard my choice for presidential candidate and the most powerful woman in the world who just happens to be African-American,
Condoleezza Rice, crying about the heavy and undue burden placed on her as Provost for Stanford University or as the U.S.
Secretary of State.
An accomplishment Michelle Obama should have been ‘proud’ of but then it didn’t
have anything to do with her, so it doesn’t count in the Obama world view.
In Secretary Rice’s 2006 Commencement
speech at Boston College she destroyed the pandering attitudes of Obama and Clinton. “The fourth responsibility of the
educated person is to be optimistic. Too often, cynicism can be the fellow traveler of learning and I understand why. History
is full of much cruelty and suffering and darkness and it can be hard sometimes to believe that a brighter future is indeed
dawning. But for all of our past failings, for all of our current problems, more people now enjoy lives of hope and opportunity
than ever before in all of human history. This progress has been the concerted effort not of cynics but of visionaries and
optimists, of impatient patriots who dealt with our world as it was, but who never ever accepted that they were powerless
to change that world for the better.”
At what point are liberals in this country going to stop playing the violin
strings of negativity and defeatism as a method of pandering for sympathy and embrace the power of being positive and accept
that their lives in America are more beneficial and plentiful than mankind has ever been allowed?
Columns I've produced that made recent Quill Pen Ten Lists
History Lesson: Why the Republican Party was Formed
Excerpted from the 1998 Encarta Digital Encyclopedia
In addition to adopting a new and harsh fugitive slave law, the Compromise of 1850 brought California into the Union as
a free state, but allowed slavery in the rest of the territories. In 1854 Congress passed the
Kansas-Nebraska
Act. This law partially repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers of the Kansas and Nebraska
territories (which included most of the present day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota) to
decide for themselves if they wanted slavery. This was known as popular sovereignty. Those hostile to this
law and other opponents of slavery responded by forming the Republican Party. Popular sovereignty soon degenerated into a civil
war in Kansas-known as the Border War, or "Bleeding Kansas"-as Southerners
and Northerners battled over the status of slavery.
Dred Scott Case, landmark case of the 1850s in which the
Supreme Court of the
United States declared that African Americans were
not U.S. citizens. The court also determined that the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in U.S. territories north and west of the state of Missouri was unconstitutional. The
Dred Scott case intensified ongoing debates over slavery that further polarized the American North and South and eventually
gave rise to the American Civil War in 1861.
In 1846 Dred Scott, a slave living in
St. Louis, Missouri, sued to
prove that he, his wife Harriet, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom. After being tried in Missouri
state courts and in a federal circuit court, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. The following year, the
court rejected Scott’s claim. Speaking for the court, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney concluded that blacks, even when free, could never become citizens of the United States and thus did not have a right
to sue in federal courts. Taney also declared that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories, a
ruling that invalidated the part of the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the western territories.
The Dissents Justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts issued dissenting opinions. Curtis
attacked Taney’s historical arguments, showing that blacks had voted in five states at the founding of the United States.
Thus, they were citizens of the nation from the beginning and could not now be denied citizenship.
Republicans also opposed the court’s decision. In speeches and throughout his famous debates with
Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln alleged a conspiracy to nationalize slavery that had been hatched
by Taney, Douglas, former U.S. president Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, then the president of the United States (see Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln-Douglas Debates).
On May 26, 1857, shortly after Taney’s decision, Scott gained his freedom when the sons of his first owner, Peter
Blow, purchased and freed Scott and his family. Scott remained a free man until his death a few months later, on February
17, 1858.
His case, however, remained a key issue in American politics and law until the outbreak of the Civil War. Taney’s
controversial decision in the case widened the breach between the North and South and further aggravated debates over slavery.
It also played a decisive role in the emergence of Lincoln as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1860
and his election later that year. Despite the decision in the case, Dred Scott and the Civil War ultimately helped
to usher in the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and what
Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom" for African Americans. In 1865 the nation adopted the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, which ended slavery. In 1868 it adopted the 14th Amendment, which declared that all persons born in the United
States are citizens of the nation and of the state in which they live. These two amendments effectively reversed Taney’s
assertions that the U.S. Constitution protected slavery and that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States.
This is a history lesson that is factually accurate and proves that the Republican Party
is the party of civil rights. This history lesson has been purposely excluded from the class rooms of our children for too
many decades.
