Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats try to blame Republicans for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The sad part is many Americans will fall for it.

The CBO promotes expanding government. Of course it does. It's a government bureaucracy.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Despite all the hype we've been hearing about how hot North America has been so far this year, it turns out that 62 percent of the US land experienced below normal temperature for the first half of the year.

Louisiana marshes are surprisingly resilient to some people. Who? I'm not the least bit surprised. I bet the people most surprised are the so-called experts who were wrong again.

BP tests plans to permanently cap the Gulf oil leak. The latest estimate is the well leaked 4.9 million barrels, but the ocean pretty much cleaned it up.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Obama's march toward dictatorship continues as he orders ICE to figure how to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants without Congressional approval.

POLITICS:

California representative Pete Stark tells his constituents like it is: the federal government has no limits on its powers. That's because Americans haven't voted for people who respect the Constitution, and it's unlikely that 2010 or 2012 will be any different. If you want government to respect the Constitution, you have to elect representatives who respect the Constitution then vote them out as soon as they become corrupt. I doubt that will ever happen.

Maxine Waters joins Charlie Rangel under the ethics spotlight. Why are these two singled out? They're all doing it.

The hypocrisy of ethics investigations is aristocrats who systematically, successfully and oppressively loot the American people like Kennedy and Byrd are lionized while the few who question this legalized corruption like Phil Hart are attacked for ethics violations.

""Among the states which purportedly ratified the 16th Amendment, at least four of them have overturned state income taxation on the basis that earning a living is a fundamental right which cannot be taxed," continues Hart. A tax on one's wages is a form of slavery; it is literally a tax on a person's right to exist.

The original intent of the 16th Amendment, as one Congressman pointed out during a 1943 speech on the House floor (see Congressional Record, March 27, 1943, p. 2580), was not to impose a tax "on income as such," but rather to impose an "excise tax with respect to certain activities and privileges which is measured by reference to the income which they produce." In other words, the income tax was applied to income derived from the privilege of acting as a government-created corporation.

As is the case with much of what happened in annus horribilis 1913 – the Federal Reserve System being the most notable example – the income tax was sold to the public as a way of protecting the common people from the predations of the super-wealthy.

At the time, the Republican-created tariff system amounted to "a tax placed on the American people not by government, but by business," writes Hart.

The income tax was designed to target those who profited from government-created and tariff-assisted monopolies. This was the "bait." The "switch" came once the 16th Amendment was ratified, when legislators in thrall to what used to be called the Money Power (with the detestable Nelson Aldrich playing a key role, as he did in the creation of the Federal Reserve) retrofitted language into the tax code that defined "wages" as the revenue source targeted by the income tax."

Original intent means nothing. What matters is the words that were ratified as understood by the people ratifying them. If the people believed newspaper editorials instead of the plain language of the amendment, they were fools and deserved what they got. However the amendment doesn't give government the power to tax some differently than others. It only allows a flat rate, and any deductions must apply equally to everybody.

""I read your book 'Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any?'" Hart was notified in a letter from IRS agent Barbara Parks announcing that the state-sponsored terrorist clique employing her was beginning an "investigation" of the book. The purpose of that inquiry, she continued, was "to determine whether or not your statements are commercial speech and whether this activity causes harm to the government."

With the help of the Center for Individual Rights, Hart successfully sued the IRS to interdict the agency's demand that he turn over the names of everybody who had purchased his book. Four years later, the IRS retaliated against Hart by issuing a final audit report denying all of his business deductions for eight years, hitting him with an additional tax liability of roughly $125,000. When he protested his treatment to the IRS, an official with the agency gloatingly explained: "When you don't give us everything we ask for, you get all of your deductions denied."

"During [my] four year audit, I provided the IRS with all my canceled checks, receipts, invoices and so on – boxes worth," Hart recounts. "Yet these deductions were denied solely for political reasons.""
Every action government takes is political.

LOCAL:

E-schools growing fast in Ohio.

Previously we learned that Dayton hospitals have a higher than average incidence of MRSA, but this article wants you to believe our hospitals are better than average.

MISC:

Google updated docs and took it backwards at least two years. I can no longer post a doc to my blog. Google used to be a great company, but they sure are sucking lately.