Category Archives: Taxation

Trump’s Private Property Plunder Plan

The government has several ways to pay for its obligations, one of which is to seize private property in the form of taxes. Taxes are private property plundered. A tax cut for those who pay taxes is tantamount to a return of stolen goods.

With a tax cut, the plundering class simply agrees to pilfer less. The notion that you must “pay for tax cuts” is like a burglar promising to return the television he stole as soon as he is in a better financial position.

I get a headache from just reading Donald Trump’s plunder plan. Rand Paul’s taxation policy is the best in a bad bunch. Rand “has proposed a 14.5 percent flat-tax rate for all types of income.” Equality under the law? What a concept? A flat tax limits state theft. The idea would send the socialist pope in search of sackcloth and ashes.

Trump, on the other hand, has let the low-income cohort off the hook. “Individuals that make less than $25,000 (and $50,000 for married couples) would pay no income taxes under Trump’s plan.”(CNN)

BAD. All citizens should have a dog in this fight. Better to let the so-called poor set the flat-tax rate for all of us. It would be lower than Paul’s 14.5 percent.

Trump’s plan is progressive: the more private property you accrue, the greater the percentage of which you forfeit.

HORRIBLE.

Unspecified, too, at least in this WSJ article, is the burden Trump plans to place on those earning between $100,000 and $300,000.

‘Tis The Season For Duplicitous & Dopey Republican Pledges

Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Taxation

Government taxes you indirectly, through spending, borrowing and inflating the money supply. The upshot is that your money’s purchasing power is drastically reduced overtime. That you can take to the bank.

Every Bill the overlords pass, moreover, “requires” more hirees and more salaries in perpetuity, that is if you take into account the generous overtime payments, pensions and other benefits the oink sector awards itself. Government is a tax-increasing scheme. This is why when the Republican presidential hopefuls make a song and a dance out of pledging to Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes on the American people; they do so with impunity. They are, nevertheless, full of it. Besides, didn’t they make similar pledges during the previous election cycle? Or was it the midterm prior?

Chris Christie Wednesday became the latest Republican to sign a pledge to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”

Americans for Tax Reform has been urging presidential candidates to sign the pledge. In 2012, all Republicans except one, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, did.

Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is the ninth of the 17 prominent 2016 Republican candidates to agree to no tax increases. Also making the commitment are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, former business executive Carly Fiorina, former Sen. Rick Santorum, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.

Christie’s fiscal record has also come in for criticism from some conservatives. The Club for Growth Tuesday didn’t list Christie as one of its acceptable 2016 candidates.

“The Club for Growth praised the governor for winning concessions from public employee unions and withdrawing from a multistate compact designed to curb emissions contributing to climate change,” reported NJ.com. But, the group added, “there are enough warning signs in Christie’s record to give fiscal conservatives pause,” such as his decision to expand Medicaid coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Optics, that’s all this is.

Speaking of the season for dopey pledges, I agree with Rachel Maddow, for once, that Trump signing the GOP pledge not to run as a third-party candidate is “a giant screwup.” Trump may have lost “a lot of leverage.” Bernie Sanders, who serves as an independent in U.S. Congress, but caucuses with the Democratic Party—he has not felt the need to sign any pledge to adhere to the Democratic Party’s do’s and don’ts.

Oregon Oink Sector And The Urban-Renewal Trough

Business, Federalism, Government, Taxation, The State

Broadcaster Lars Larson did a bang-up job, today, in shaming City of Oregon Mayor Dan Holladay for his ambient lawlessness: first, for securing appropriations in the cause of urban, central planning; next, in his haste to frustrate the democratic will of the outraged citizens.

The circumstances, courtesy of the Portland Tribune:

Mayor Dan Holladay’s opinion piece published in the Autumn 2015 Trail News, a publication providing citizens information on most city departments, told every household in the city that a petition to kill urban renewal would have a “very chilling effect on economic development” not just in the downtown urban renewal district, but throughout the city.

After the state received a complaint on Aug. 25 from petitioners, Holladay said he “made a mistake” by submitting the piece for the Trail News.

State law (ORS 260.432) says that elected officials shouldn’t publish letters advocating a political position in “a newsletter or other publication produced and distributed by public employees.” Oregon City’s mayor has for years submitted a piece to the “City Matters” column on page 2 of the city’s Trail News publication.
…

John Williams, one of the petitioners, offered this trenchant condemnation:

Holladay doubly misstepped by submitting the argument for a city publication before the measure had even gotten enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

“He has the right to express his opinion, but he shouldn’t be using citizens’ taxpayer dollars to try to put a halt to a democratic process,” Williams said. “Signing the petition in question will not ‘put a halt to these programs and many others’ as he claims, but only put an issue on the ballot for citizens to debate.” …

And no representative ought to use “citizens’ taxpayer dollars” for job-creation programs. The narrowest interpretation of a local government’s authority ought to be pursued and adhered to by all local representatives, whatever their political stripe.

That government job-creation programs are a racket for the locality is abundantly clear in our neck of The Evergreen State. Paving over quaint, perfectly lovely trails is a political hobbyhorse around here.

Local politics is not my bailiwick; but when I do venture into the miasma, the blood boils at the excesses in the pink state.

Those who’re better suited to confront the juggernaut that is local government might find it useful to apprise themselves of the history and politics of Urban Renewal, a history that has a lot to do with making poor people go away by demolishing their homes—gentrification, if you will. City officials—they live off wealth others generate: taxes—“grow” concerned over “declining incomes in and tax revenues from certain neighborhoods.” They then use their power to designate them as “blighted.” Government’s hope, ultimately, is to generate more tax revenues from the neighborhoods.

The CATO Institute speaks to how cities use tax-increment financing (TIF) in the service of “crony capitalism and social engineering.” If you want to slum it, read about the history and politics of TIF.

Savoring #Hillary’s Vow Of Silence

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Taxation

“Savoring Hillary’s Vow Of Silence” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The national media are sulking. Hillary Clinton won’t speak to them. But what is it about this power-hungry dirigista that the media don’t already know?

Prior to taking a vow of silence, Mrs. Clinton promised to make President Obama’s legislation by executive action with respect to immigration seem like child’s play; a “DREAMers” delight, if you will.

Where’s the mystery there?

Big Media know full-well about—and have just about forgiven—Madam Secretary’s habit of conducting state affairs via private server, later scrubbed clean of unflattering or incriminating communications.

The same press corps knows that the Clinton Foundation, in which Mrs. Clinton is mired, is awash in funds from foreign governments and likely beholden to these patrons. Those so inclined can check out Charity Navigator. For all its billions, the Clinton Foundation doesn’t rate a mention by the eminent Charity rating service. “In 2013, a measly 9 percent of the money went to charity!” “Repulsive,” avers John Stossel.

Making community college “free” was another of Hillary’s brain infarcts, voiced in Monticello, Iowa, in March this year. “There’s something deeply wrong about students and their families needing to go into debt to finance a college education” were Mrs. Clinton’s semantic strokes of genius, disgorged during her first meet-and-greet, with members of the press (mainly).

What’s there to miss?

Didn’t we have The Same Talk (in the same place) back in April of 2012, about America’s next financial bubble in search of a pin, the $1 trillion student-loan debt? Campaigning in Iowa, Obama promised America’s miseducated Millennials to keep the student-loan bubble from bursting. During his State of the Union address of January 2012, Barry Soetoro Frankenstein vowed to mandate yet more loans at fixed prices.

When it comes, will the media react with wonderment at Hillary’s “fresh” take on educational central planning and price fixing?

Not content with acquiring wealth through the dishonest, predatory process of politics (to contrast with the honest, productive, economic means of earning a living)—Hillary Clinton and husband have protected their ill-gotten gains from the taxman through trusts …

… Read the rest. “Savoring Hillary’s Vow Of Silence” is the current column, now on WND.