Heroic Swiss Bankers (UBS AG)

Law, Private Property, Socialism, Taxation, The State

In 2001, I had the unusual occasion to commend the Bush Administration for refusing “to support an attempt by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to clamp down on tax havens. If the junta of high-tax governments has its way,” I wrote in the Financial Post, “not only will there be no place left to run to, but by eliminating what tax havens offer, these governments will have eliminated tax competition, and with it the imperative to downsize their fiefdoms.”

(The occasion was an unusual one, because I’ve had only two positives things to say about the last band of vandals to have trashed the country: I approved of Bush upholding Terry Schiavo’s negative right to life. And I seconded his refusal to capitulate to the Kyoto-protocol crazies. Great record: mine, that is.)

The obama thugs, however, are adamant to muscle every American who attempts to safeguard his property. Reports the WSJ: “Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has delved into alleged tax haven abuse for years, said he hopes a bill he is sponsoring, and similar legislation in the House, will stop banks from doing what UBS did.”

What did UBS do?

UBS is honoring its contract with its depositors, and fighting U.S. efforts to obtain the names of another 52,000 of its Swiss account holders.

“Levin expressed frustration that despite treaty obligations Swiss authorities and UBS continue to hold out against U.S. demands. ‘We cannot rely on the Swiss; that’s the bottom line,’ he said.”

Yippee, and let us hope the Swiss continue to hold out against the globe-trotting Obamaites.

Recommended: “The War on Tax Havens”

BHO's Budget

Barack Obama, The State

Veronique de Rugy decrypts BHO’s budget. As bad as this thing is, don’t forget that by an amazing coincidence he signed at least two more spending bills before it, one of which was the biggest spending bill in history.
Frankly, I think he’s losing it—throwing everything and the kitchen sink at “the economy,” which, as you know, responds badly to planning and planners.
BHO honestly imagined that he could walk on water. And fin de siècle America, where the Idiot is Lord and Master, facilitated his fantasy. Now BHO is realizing that he is not the magic man he thought he was, after all.

* “the president forecasts a budget deficit of $1.75 trillion in 2009. That represents 12.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), making it the highest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II.”
* “In 2009, total spending (mandatory plus discretionary) will reach $3.94 trillion. That’s a 32 percent increase over the 2008 level, one of the biggest year-to-year increases in the past 50 years. It represents 27.7 percent of GDP, a serious hike from the 21 percent level reached in 2008. Much of this increase is the product of the bailout signed by President Bush last fall. It is also the result of the federal takeover of Freddie and Fannie as well as the 2009 share of stimulus spending.”
* “For 2010, the president requests $3.55 trillion in total spending.”
* “Obama’s budget proposes boosting tax collection from about 16.2 percent of the economy this year to 19 percent in 2013. He will do that by allowing some of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under Bush to expire on schedule. This affects people in households making more than $250,000 a year. Under the president’s plan, the top two marginal tax rates will increase from 33 to 36 percent and from 35 to 39.6 percent, while both the capital-gains tax and dividend tax will rise from 15 to 20 percent.
In addition, he plans to pay for his new health care ‘reserve fund’ mostly by a $318 billion tax hike over 10 years in the form of reduced deductions—such as the mortgage interest deduction—for the wealthiest Americans. These taxpayers would also see their capital gains tax rates go up.
Businesses would also see their tax burdens increase. Obama plans to raise $353 billion over 10 years through 13 different taxes (new or old). For instance, his budget reinstates superfund taxes, repeals manufacturing tax deductions for oil and natural gas companies, increases the geological and geophysical amortization period for independent producers to 7 years, and eliminates the advanced earned income tax credit.
* “He also proposes to create a new $112 billion tax over the next decade on the energy use and production of every American. This ‘cap and trade’ program is designed to battle global warming by forcing companies to buy permits if they wish to emit heat-trapping pollutants.”

* MEET THE NEXT WAR PRESIDENT: “The United States spent about $190 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008. Obama expects that the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will total just over $140 billion this year. Half of that money has already been appropriated by Congress. Supposedly, the president will make one final ‘supplemental’ budget request to Congress for an additional $75 billion to cover war costs for the rest of 2009.
The main assumption in the defense budget is that the cost of the wars will be $130 billion in 2010 and that it will drop sharply after that, to $50 billion annually beginning in 2011.

* MORE DISSEMBLING. “Despite some improvements from the Bush budgets, Obama’s plan is far from being free of tricks. First, while he told Congress on Tuesday that his budget team has ‘already identified $2 trillion in savings’ over the next decade to help tame record budget deficits, one would be hard press to actually find any programs getting cut. In fact, it appears that about half of the ‘savings’ come from his proposed tax increases. He plans on reducing the deficit by $639.7 billion over 10 years with only his income tax increase and a $311 billion reduction in the debt service.”
“More importantly, the budget ‘saves’ hundreds of billions of dollars by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq until 2019. Obama includes war spending in his baseline projections to be able to show a $1.49 billion savings over 10 years. Yet even under the previous administration we were supposed to be out of Iraq by 2012. It’s highly dissembling to say we can get savings by cutting spending that isn’t actually going to occur.”

CONCLUDES Veronique de Rugy: “there is very little to be happy about in Obama’s first budget. It simply expands the Bush policies of bigger government and increased centralization, which threatens to permanently transform America’s culture and economic outlook by making more and more Americans dependent on government.”

The complete article is “The Era of Even Bigger Government.”

BHO’s Budget

Barack Obama, Economy, The State

Veronique de Rugy decrypts BHO’s budget. As bad as this thing is, don’t forget that by an amazing coincidence he signed at least two more spending bills before it, one of which was the biggest spending bill in history.
Frankly, I think he’s losing it—throwing everything and the kitchen sink at “the economy,” which, as you know, responds badly to planning and planners.
BHO honestly imagined that he could walk on water. And fin de siècle America, where the Idiot is Lord and Master, facilitated his fantasy. Now BHO is realizing that he is not the magic man he thought he was, after all.

* “the president forecasts a budget deficit of $1.75 trillion in 2009. That represents 12.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), making it the highest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II.”
* “In 2009, total spending (mandatory plus discretionary) will reach $3.94 trillion. That’s a 32 percent increase over the 2008 level, one of the biggest year-to-year increases in the past 50 years. It represents 27.7 percent of GDP, a serious hike from the 21 percent level reached in 2008. Much of this increase is the product of the bailout signed by President Bush last fall. It is also the result of the federal takeover of Freddie and Fannie as well as the 2009 share of stimulus spending.”
* “For 2010, the president requests $3.55 trillion in total spending.”
* “Obama’s budget proposes boosting tax collection from about 16.2 percent of the economy this year to 19 percent in 2013. He will do that by allowing some of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under Bush to expire on schedule. This affects people in households making more than $250,000 a year. Under the president’s plan, the top two marginal tax rates will increase from 33 to 36 percent and from 35 to 39.6 percent, while both the capital-gains tax and dividend tax will rise from 15 to 20 percent.
In addition, he plans to pay for his new health care ‘reserve fund’ mostly by a $318 billion tax hike over 10 years in the form of reduced deductions—such as the mortgage interest deduction—for the wealthiest Americans. These taxpayers would also see their capital gains tax rates go up.
Businesses would also see their tax burdens increase. Obama plans to raise $353 billion over 10 years through 13 different taxes (new or old). For instance, his budget reinstates superfund taxes, repeals manufacturing tax deductions for oil and natural gas companies, increases the geological and geophysical amortization period for independent producers to 7 years, and eliminates the advanced earned income tax credit.
* “He also proposes to create a new $112 billion tax over the next decade on the energy use and production of every American. This ‘cap and trade’ program is designed to battle global warming by forcing companies to buy permits if they wish to emit heat-trapping pollutants.”

* MEET THE NEXT WAR PRESIDENT: “The United States spent about $190 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008. Obama expects that the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will total just over $140 billion this year. Half of that money has already been appropriated by Congress. Supposedly, the president will make one final ‘supplemental’ budget request to Congress for an additional $75 billion to cover war costs for the rest of 2009.
The main assumption in the defense budget is that the cost of the wars will be $130 billion in 2010 and that it will drop sharply after that, to $50 billion annually beginning in 2011.

* MORE DISSEMBLING. “Despite some improvements from the Bush budgets, Obama’s plan is far from being free of tricks. First, while he told Congress on Tuesday that his budget team has ‘already identified $2 trillion in savings’ over the next decade to help tame record budget deficits, one would be hard press to actually find any programs getting cut. In fact, it appears that about half of the ‘savings’ come from his proposed tax increases. He plans on reducing the deficit by $639.7 billion over 10 years with only his income tax increase and a $311 billion reduction in the debt service.”
“More importantly, the budget ‘saves’ hundreds of billions of dollars by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq until 2019. Obama includes war spending in his baseline projections to be able to show a $1.49 billion savings over 10 years. Yet even under the previous administration we were supposed to be out of Iraq by 2012. It’s highly dissembling to say we can get savings by cutting spending that isn’t actually going to occur.”

CONCLUDES Veronique de Rugy: “there is very little to be happy about in Obama’s first budget. It simply expands the Bush policies of bigger government and increased centralization, which threatens to permanently transform America’s culture and economic outlook by making more and more Americans dependent on government.”

The complete article is “The Era of Even Bigger Government.”

Update II: Mr. Constitution?

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

At 13 percent, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin were tied in a presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. A point made in “Sensational Sarah” obtains: “Would that Rep. Ron Paul, the only politician who adheres to America’s founding philosophy, was Palin’s running mate, wisely steering her boundless energy and excellent instincts in excising the cancer from the body politic.”

As for the other straw “winners”; they’re real losers. Mitt Romney came first (“best 2012 GOP presidential candidate”). Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was the runner-up.

My colleague Vox Day sums it up:

“These results tend to indicate that a little more than one-quarter of the ‘conservatives’ at CPAC have a functional brain. Romney is a liberal technocrat. Jindal is a little goblin who just blew his first moment on the national stage.”

An award for upholding the Constitution belonged to Congressman Paul but went to Rush Limbaugh.

On the merits of that award collected by Rush, I once angered ditto heads for pointing out, in “It’s About Federalism, Stupid!”, Rush’s ruthless and unconstitutional case against actor Michael Fox on the matter of stem cell research and the fetus fetish:

“The pompous talk-show host’s sneering assault on a deformed Michael J. Fox was utterly depraved. Aping Fox’s Parkinson’s-induced spasms, Limbaugh told listeners: “He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act.” Rather than lampoon an-obviously afflicted human being, someone with a head and a heart would have stuck to the issue.

And the issue is this: The founders bequeathed a central government of delegated and enumerated powers. Intellectual property laws are the only constitutional means at Congress’s disposal with which to “promote the Progress of Science.” (About their merit Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor, was unconvinced.) The Constitution gives Congress only 18 specific legislative powers. Research and development spending is nowhere among them.

Neither are Social Security, civil rights (predicated as they are on grotesque violations of property rights), Medicare, Medicaid, and the elaborate public works sprung from the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses—you name it, it’s likely unconstitutional. There is simply no warrant in the Constitution for most of what the Federal Frankenstein does.”

Update I (March 2): About the welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”: Article I, Section 8 our overlords have taken to mean that government can pick The People’s pocketbooks for any possible project, even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the limited powers so delegated.

Asks historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: “What point would there be in specifically listing the federal government’s powers if the general welfare clause had already provided the government with an essentially boundless authority to enact whatever it thought would contribute to people’s well-being?” Woods evokes no less an authority than the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison: “Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

The complete column is “The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil.”

Update II: With respect to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Barbara makes a good point. Having spoken openly about decentralization and devolution of power to the states, Jindal is considerably more conservative than most of the Republican governors. Not being as pale as Palin—he is of Indian descent—Jindal has diversity on his side. He is therefore less likely than, say Sarah, to be condemned as a “conservative zealot.”