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TAX AND SPEND:

I like this skepticism over Standard & Poors warning about US government debt. If they're not downgrading it, what's the point? It might just be to fool the people into thinking something real is being done about the debt.

Paul Ryan's budget plan claims to cut $4 trillion from budget growth over ten years. In order to make his plan sound comparable, Obama is claiming it cuts $4 trillion too, but his is over twelve years. This is designed to confuse people.

Here's another reason why government pseudo-services are so expensive: the overhead of tax compliance.

"There is a lot more to taxes than simply paying the bill. Taxpayers must spend significantly more than $1 in order to provide $1 of income-tax revenue to the federal government.


To start with, individuals and businesses must pay the government the $1 in revenue plus the costs of their own time spent filing and complying with the tax code; plus the tax collection costs of the IRS; plus the tax compliance outlays that individuals and businesses pay to help them file their taxes.

In a study published last week by the Laffer Center, my colleagues Wayne Winegarden, John Childs and I estimate that these costs alone are a staggering $431 billion annually. This is a cost markup of 30 cents on every dollar paid in taxes. And this is not even a complete accounting of the costs of tax complexity."

It gets worse:

"David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union provides a useful perspective on how big the tax compliance industry is. According to his research, as of 2009 the income-tax industry employed "more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies—more than all the workers at Wal-Mart Stores, United Parcel Service, McDonald's, International Business Machines, and Citigroup combined." Without diminishing in any way the professionalism of tax attorneys, accountants and financial planners, all of these efforts produce nothing other than, well, tax compliance. "

That's a phenomenal waste of money.

Boortz reports: "There are now 72,536 pages of federal tax code rules, regulations, and IRS rulings." and "A hundred years ago, federal spending for each person was the equivalent of $200 in today’s dollars … This year, it’s over $12,000."

The Finns oust their ruling party in anger of the bailout of Portugal in another step in the sovereign debt collapse of Europe.

"The Portugal case and the Finnish reaction should serve as a wake-up call. All these bailouts and stimulus packages cannot hide the fact that the governments and banking systems of the United States and Europe are fundamentally bankrupt, sustained only by the power to create money out of thin air. Each intervention is working to buy time but not to deal with the fundamental problem. And each time, when the problems return, they are worse than before."

The same thing is happening here.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

More evidence that government creates poverty, death and disease.

"Research by the World Bank indicates that the increase in biofuels production over 2004 levels would push more than 35 million additional people into absolute poverty in 2010 in developing countries. Using statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Indur Goklany estimates that this would lead to at least 192,000 excess deaths per year, plus disease resulting in the loss of 6.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per year. "

Every government policy is an act of aggression against the people and does the same.

Charles Manson joins the global warming frauds.

POLITICS:

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter says what all politicians think: he would love a dictatorship. But he'll get blasted for being honest.