Tax Experts I Want To Meet

 

I have been watching, with some interest, the way some people view the tax situation in the U.S. and how to deal with it.

I want to meet the fiscal financial experts the Republicans are using for advice! If they can do for me what they tell the GOP they can do for the government, I want in!

I am very interested to know how you reduce the income of the government by keeping taxes low for the very wealthy, such as Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Dick Cheney, and a very select few others, and still find the money to pay off the national deficit.Very interested indeed if those same tax specialists can also show how this can be done with no tax increase on anyone else too. Totally amazing!

To put this is simpler terms, I will use an ordinary person.

Jack is paid $1000 per month, his taxes are, say, $200, so his take-home pay is $800. Now, the GOP have found a way to pay Jack less, $950, and take less tax, $180, and somehow Jack is supposed to be able to pay his debt bill of $1000 without any problem. I want in! Earn less, pay less tax, and pay off your long-term debt with more money! Yeah! Introduce me to those specialists any place, any time!

So, the GOP want all this hinged on tax breaks for the wealthy, and those hinges are things like giving the people who RAN to a disaster called 9/11, risked THEIR lives, and now face some very nasty health problems, plus, the people who lost all those jobs when the economy went downhill faster than any Olympic skier will have to wait until the rich get a tax break. Those are enormously expensive and very nasty hinges! The unemployed will find their payments held hostage to Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, and all those CEO’s of banks, corporations and other wealthy patrons.

Now, one point here, those very wealthy people do have tax specialists, so the tax write-offs, the means to pay less every year for each dollar of income is much less than I pay. Yes, they already have means to pay less, even if they would be paying the tax without the breaks. I have one family member who makes around 7 times what a senior in my family makes, and the senior is paying her taxes quarterly, while the other member is paying close to zero because of the write-offs. This is common as the grass on the prairies.

The reasoning is making me wonder where I managed to miss something. UNLESS the wealthy get a temporary or even permanent tax break, then those who are literally suffering cannot get anything to help them out.

As for the taxes themselves, the math here is very, VERY interesting.

The country is like any household, it needs money to pay bills. So, the country collects taxes to do that. What I see the GOP advice saying is this. Reduce the income of the government (the national household), make sure the wealthy, plus make sure seniors who need the money, people who are unemployed with children at home, and all those young men and women just out of college or university who have tuition bills wait until the income to the government is reduced. Now, I have lived a while, so I know that when my income gets reduced, I cannot pay bills that are on the increase.

Apparently the GOP have found a way to do just that! Reduce the taxes, which in turn reduces the income, and somehow pay off the deficit bills which are rising. Yes! I want to meet those people who have figure out how to do that! You betcha!

Going Down? War, Inflation, and American War on ……..

Yep, there is widespread unemployment, and yes, there is also the need to support two wars, as well as try to pay for the deployment and other costs of the military.

What does this cost each household per month? Well, best guess right now is around $600. Each and every household in the U.S., through taxes will pay for the costs of these wars at a rate higher than a lot of the mortgages after the housing crisis.

Where are things going? History shows that wars only do one thing, create inflation, because the costs of waging those wars must be paid, even when there is little left over in any budget for those payments.

Here is where it gets scary.

Most of the wars in history began from civil unrest, unemployment, and international or internal national stresses. The collapse of the international banking and monetary systems have created both. Resentment is already growing, and blame is being placed on the American banking system, the relaxation of the regulations on that banking system, and the lack of real resolve to restore regulation.

Who is going to pay for all the veteran’s benefits and the costs

The Bush Administration has not asked the American people to sacrifice for the war effort. In fact, the Bush Administration did not even put the costs of the war into the national budget at all.

The tax payer will be paying this bill for years, if not decades, and with the whole idea that you can wage a war on “terrorism” being a limitless war, there will be far more costs coming, and coming soon.

The departments created by the Bush Administration all add to the yearly bills, and with each incident, there are more and more paycheques created by the endless number of “possible threats”.

So, currently there is a really nasty set of circumstances that are hitting every single household in American. Jobs are no longer available in the marketplace, the wealthy are keeping every dime and asking for more money from the government (read tax payer, poor or middle class) and the inevitability of taxes being raised.

Republicans will scream, no doubt, about more taxation, but unless they manage to get their ‘pollyanna’ thinking geared more to the grim reality that the Bush Administration got the entire country into, they are NOT facing wars or reality!

Irony here is really bitter. The American society did (yes, that is past tense) have a real drive to improve their world, to invent, to create new and more efficient ways of producing items. Then the businesses realized that those same items could, and are, far cheaper to make in other countries. Jobs will NEVER return to the U.S. as they once were in the “good old days”. It will NOT happen. Why?

Simple, there is NO reason to want to move those jobs back to a location where wages are higher and costs are higher. So, unless the American worker wants to be paid less than other workers elsewhere, and still pay that $600 per month, those companies will just keep paying dirt poor wages and watch the economy those very companies depend on shrivel.

There is a second reason, the unpredictability that private health insurance puts on not only the business sector, but the working people themselves. Each company that even tries to provide basic coverage is now facing a completely unpredictable cost structure for that coverage.

Let me try to put this into a simplified story here.

Jack is working for a company that once had a very comprehensive health care package, but with the rising costs, that company (I will call it by a totally fictitious name, Kitchens and Cabinets of New Hampshire) cut back. Now Jack gets only very minimal coverage, and his co-pay has risen. KCNH now finds that the private insurers are looking to get rid of his company from their files, so they are looking at Jack for any possible pre-existing conditions in his medical past.

KCNH decides to look elsewhere for a location. The boss at KCNH finds out that he can move his entire operation to another country where his costs would be 40% lower for health care coverage and that coverage is far better than where he is now. He looks at his bottom line, the operating costs, and realizes just how better off his company would be after the move. The money he is spending on his employees would allow him to expand, rather than drain the company further. So, he chooses to move the entire operation to that country.

Jack is now faced with a real problem. His boss tells Jack that either Jack immigrates, or he will no longer have a job.

Jack goes home to his family, and is totally devastated. His daughter is already dealing with a lingering health problem and Jack and his wife have already had so many arguments over which bill to pay first, that both of them are showing signs of stress on their own bodies.

There is instability growing in the Jack family, mostly caused by the demands of the mortgage which has now become worth more than the real value of the home, and the realization that, without the basic coverage Jack did get from his employer’s health coverage, their entire family is at risk.

Jack talks with his wife, tells her what the company is going to do, and starts to look at the option of going with the company to the new location. He does some research, looks at the taxes, looks at the new location, looks at the housing costs, then, finally, looks at the health coverage the country provides.

Hmmmmmm this is looking good! All ambulance, hospital, doctor, specialist, and other services are covered! No wonder his boss is moving the company to the new location!

Jack talks to his wife about the changes they would face. His wife points out one thing. Predictability!

The costs of the health coverage are set, and cannot be changed without solid reasoning. The company will have total predictability too! Their employees will no longer have to work with the increased stress of trying to come up with the co-pay and find ways to pay for even one doctor visit. Yep, this definitely looks much better for all concerned.

A stable work force needs to have some predictability, if they are to remain stable. Simplicity itself, but right now, that is exactly what is NOT happening in the American economy.

Even dogs know that being stressed will make them sick, so they will, with animal wisdom, try to find a way to get rid of the stress.

Back to the big picture, now.

Wars on two fronts, the banking mess which seems to have become a business plan (build huge wealth on faulty housing insurance or multi-level mortgaging) which has now become the BANK OF AMERICAN TAX PAYER, which covers the “mistakes” or screw-ups by banks, and unemployment that has skyrocketed, and there is massive instability.  Add as the icing on the cake, the demands by private insurance more money from those same tax payer pockets, and the recipe for a collapse is baked and served.

Republicans want their cake and they want to eat it too! NO more taxes, but pay for the wars, the banks and cover all those millions of Americans without health insurance with what? Buttons?

Jack may be lucky, because at least his employer is willing to take Jack along, but how many companies are willing to do that?

War has one guaranteed effect, inflation. This has been true since the 1600’s, and remains true now. So the future of the American family is set. MORE taxes, inflation driving prices up again, and jobs that will stay outside the country.

Essentially the U.S. will soon become what Britain became after WW2. A far lesser power, with debts and the need for reconstruction that may take decades.

Ah yes, speaking of the U.K. post WW2! What most Republicans and Democrats have not even understood is this. Europe, the U.K. and WW2 faced 6 years of 9/11! Daily bombing, fires, orphans that were lost, much like Haiti now, and houses obliterated. If you compare photographs of Port Au Prince and London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Danzig (Gdansk), or any other major city in Europe with photos of Port Au Prince, you will see only small differences. The U.K. went through years of this, over and over, all the while trying to keep their own forces on the battlefront!

Most current universal health care systems were implemented in the period following the Second World War as a process of deliberate healthcare reform, intended to make health care available to all, in the spirit of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, signed by every country doing so. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections, including Article 25’s right to health.

This is the mistake that is now coming back to bite the U.S. big time!

Here is more irony, the U.K. had a debt that was at least 100% of their entire Gross Domestic Production at the end of the war. Much higher than even the current debt the U.S. has now!

The Members of Parliament were dealing with housing crises all over, the repatriation of wounded soldiers and POW’s, as well as trying to find some way to rebuild, so even considering changing the costs to the government and increasing the debt to fund a national health care program must have been highly unlikely. “We cannot afford it!” That was far more true then than the current cries from the Republicans and those who are fiscally conservative now!

What happened? The British Parliament, along with the House of Lords passed a bill that created the National Health Service in 1948, just a very few years after going through years of 9/11!

The National Health Service passed in 1948, a bill which extended health care security to all legal residents. So now I listen to the “reasons” and all the rubbish that those who are trying to block any kind of real health care reform, and wonder this. If YOU had lived through years of 9/11, had an entire country to rebuild, would you have the guts, the leadership, the foresight to change?

A country where workers KNOW what that they can get sick, in an accident, or face contagious diseases and get treatment that is not going to BANKRUPT them are far more likely to work better, be healthier, and their employers are also going to be able to expand!

The health care “system” is highly over controlled by corporate interests, and capitalism has been allowed to determine who, literally, lives or dies.

The “good old days” of America being the super power, the “leader of the free world”, the shining example of “democracy” are done, over, kaput, fini, GONE!

The rest of the world has gathered steam, is progressing, and is matching the U.S. in innovation, in production, and will continue to. The companies based in the U.S. have absolutely NO interest in bringing jobs back home. The U.S. forgot to rebuild infrastructure, forgot to make their own back yard a priority, forgot the middle class worker in favour of profitability. The U.S. financial “wizards” found a way to once again, put the onus on the tax payer for screwing the world economies, yet there was an enormous outcry of “too big to fail!”  Credit default swaps were a way to run around insurance regulation, and with all the mess created, it will take at least a decade or more to undo the damage, IF those in the Congress or Senate are even willing to take on the leadership and have the guts to make stiffer regulation a possibility.

The big picture does NOT look good, and without some real leadership on everyone’s part, the U.S. will be paying for all this neglect for years.

Republican Louis Gohmert, Calling YOU Out, YOU get “Socialized” Medical Care

I got information from Louis Gohmert about his television interview on Fox News today, and decided to try and get more information on the man, his Congressional district and his views.

Well, it is very revealing.

First off, he is a veteran, served in the U.S. Army as a Captain, which gives him a lifetime supply of medical care under the V.A. at a very low cost to him and his family.

Second, he is a member of Congress, which also gives him the opportunity to get “socialized” medical coverage through Congress.

Third, this comes from his own website:

If Congress insists on forcing this healthcare abomination onto American citizens, then those who vote in favor of it should be required to step up and become the first customers of the disastrous government program they have created.

I refuse to vote in favor of a health care reform bill that has not been given an appropriate amount of time for personal review by both Members of Congress and American citizens. I will oppose any legislation that lets the federal government snatch power and control away from patients and their doctors.

Health Care abomination? Mr. Gohmert, YOU have the health care abomination NOW, as a member of Congress!

Now, who are his voters and just how many would be benefited by the health care “abomination”?

The last census I could get reveals some interesting facts.

Mr Gohmert’s own home town of Tyler, Texas has:The median income for a household in the city was $34,163, and the median income for a family was $43,618. Males had a median income of $31,728 versus $22,397 for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,184. 16.8% of the population and 13.0% of families were below the poverty threshold. 23.3% of those under the age of 18 and 12.1% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

The people living in Nacogdoches are even worse off.

About 20.9% of families and 32.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.4% of those under age 18 and 13.3% of those age 65 or over. Even if you take in the student population, that is a remarkable number of people living in poverty.

Yep, that is right, a very large number of people living below the POVERTY threshold, which means a good number of his own constituents are those very people that would benefit.

Mr. Gohmert is a lawyer, so I would be willing to bet at least $1 that he makes far more than the median income, and is quite capable of buying private insurance.

The rest of his district is not much better off. Longview has an average of 15% below the poverty threshold.

The entire district has LESS than 2% earning more than $200,000 per year. Yes, less than 2%.

So, here is a Congressman calling the reform an “abomination” and his own constituents are living with low incomes, higher than average unemployment and mostly white. Yet he wants this reform to either be put off indefinitely.

The claim that the government “snatches power and control away from patients and their doctors” is, at best, a bogus one. I can bet that the current private insurers in this district are, in fact, denying the patients the ability to go outside the “care area” and to talk to any doctor they want to, even IF they could afford the cost.

Mr. Gohmert, YOU are Busted. YOU get Congressional health care options, YOU get the Armed Services health care option, YOU can afford private insurance.

YOU are the one who needs to realize just who you represent and what THOSE people need, not some kind of grandstanding and rhetoric.

President Obama’s Speach to School Children, What is the Problem Here?

This is the text of his speech. Read it, and try as hard as you can to find a damn thing political about this, I dare you!

I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a
good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave.
If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something
new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.

Too bad some people shoot their mouths off before even knowing what the President was even thinking about, never mind putting into this speech.

There were some parent in hysterics over this, believe it or not. Obviously there were some out there who were using scare tactics and innuendo to get people emotionally overwrought, but what bothers me is the whole bloody uproar. What on earth did they expect him to say?

From CNN report:

Many conservative parents aren’t buying it. They’re convinced the president is going to use the opportunity to press a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds.

“Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me,” suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH. “I’m an American. They are Americans, and I don’t feel that’s OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now.”

School administrators are caught in the middle of the controversy. Some have decided to show the president’s speech, while others will not. Many, such as Wellesley, Massachusetts, superintendent Bella Wong, are deciding on a class-by-class basis, leaving the decision in the hands of individual teachers.

“The president of the United States has asked us to facilitate his outreach to students. And in that vein, we have decided to honor the request,” Wong told CNN. “We’ll trust in his judgment.”

Republican leaders have not shied away from the debate. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible contender for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination, said Friday the classroom is no place to show a video address from Obama.

“At a minimum it’s disruptive. Number two, it’s uninvited. And number three, if people would like to hear his message they can, on a voluntary basis, go to YouTube or some other source and get it. I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children,” he told reporters at the Minnesota State fair.

Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer released a statement this week accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to “indoctrinate” children.

“As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” Greer said.

“The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans … is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”

I am appalled at the utter stupidity of some of these assumptions! There have been SEVERAL Presidents who spoke to school children over the years. “Justify his plans”? What are you smoking, Jim Greer? Must be damn good stuff because you have lost touch with any kind of reality here! Same goes for Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty! What are you smoking? Or have you taken your medications lately? Wow! “Force it upon the nation’s school children”?

Shanneen Barron, if this speech is that scary, then I very strongly suggest you never, ever read any book beyond Grade 1 Level. Those are far more scary, especially the tween books with mysteries, death, and even romance at age 12! Good Grief! GET A GRIP!

I have a feeling that the Republicans just wanted to put the whole White House, President Obama, and the Democratic Party in the darkest light possible.

The uproar has NOTHING to do with this speech, but more about trying to garner votes in the mid-term elections.

There is a saying: “There may be some who believe you to be a fool, but the only proof may come when you OPEN YOUR MOUTH!” I guess some have proven just how big a fool they are.