The poor should pay more

The top 40 percent of households by before-tax income actually paid 106.2 percent of the nation’s net income taxes in 2010, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

At the same time, households in the bottom 40 percent took in an average of $18,950 in what the CBO called “government transfers” in 2010.

Taxpayers in the top 40 percent of households were able to pay more than 100 percent of net federal income taxes in 2010 because Americans in the bottom 40 percent actually paid negative income taxes, according to the CBO study entitled, “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010.”

“When refundable tax credits, such as the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, exceed the other federal tax liabilities of the households in an income group, those households are said to have a negative average tax rate,” said the CBO study.

“In its analysis, CBO measured individual income taxes net of refundable credits,” it said.

In 2010, the CBO determined, American households in the bottom 40 percent paid negative amounts in income-tax dollars and a negative average income-tax rate.

“Much of the progressivity of the federal tax system derives from the individual income tax,” said the report. “In 2010, the lowest quintile’s average rate for the individual income tax was -9.2 percent and the second income quintile’s rate was -2.3 percent.”

“A group can have a negative income tax rate if its refundable tax credits exceed the income tax otherwise owed,” said the CBO report.

The households in the top 20 percent by income paid 92.9 percent of net income tax revenues taken in by the federal government in 2010, said CBO. The households in the fourth quintile paid another 13.3 percent of net income tax revenues. Together, the top 40 percent of households paid 106.2 percent of the federal government’s net income tax revenue.

The third quintile paid another 2.9 percent—bringing the total share of net federal income tax revenues paid by the top 60 percent to 109.1 percent.

That was evened out by the net negative income tax paid by the bottom 40 percent

SOURCE

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The Left Learned Wrong Lessons from Nazism

Dennis Prager

The only way to understand what is happening to America in our time -- and for that matter, in Europe since World War II -- is to understand the left.

And one way to understand the left -- and its enormous appeal to many decent people -- is to understand what it learned from World War II and the Nazi experience. The lessons people draw from history go a long way toward explaining how they view the world and how they behave.

Unfortunately, virtually everything the left learned from the unique evil known as Nazism has been wrong.

The first lesson was that the right is evil, not merely wrong. Because Nazism has been successfully labelled "right-wing," virtually every right-wing position and leader has been either cynically or sincerely characterized by the left as a danger to civilization. That is why the right is so often labelled fascist and compared to Nazis. Vast numbers of people in the West truly believe that if the right prevails, fascism will follow.

Of course, Nazism was not right-wing -- certainly not in American terms. How could it be? Right-wing means less government, not more. Nor was it left-wing, even though "Nazism" was an abbreviation for National Socialism.

Nazism was sui generis. It was radical racism combined with totalitarianism; and racism as a doctrine is neither right nor left.

We have no contemporary movement of any major significance that is Nazi-like. The closest thing we have is Islamist hatred of non-Muslims -- but even that is mostly religion- rather than race-based.

The association of Nazism with right-wing is one reason many Jews loathe the right. In the Jewish psyche, to fight the right is to fight incipient Nazism.

The second lesson the left learned is directly related to the first. If the right is so evil that, if allowed to prevail, Nazism will follow, then surely the left must be beautiful and noble. And that, of course, is how the left sees itself -- as inherently beautiful and noble. After all, how can the opposite of Nazism be anything but noble?

The third erroneous lesson is a deep fear and loathing of nationalism. Since the Nazis committed their crimes in the name of nationalism (race-based nationalism, to be precise), nationalism must be curbed. That explains much of the left's contempt for Americans who wave the flag -- indeed, the left has rendered the term "flag-wavers" a pejorative term.

How else to explain the fact that on American national holidays one finds so many more flags displayed in conservative areas than in liberal ones? The trauma of World War I had already killed nationalism in much of Europe. And World War II did that for the left in America.

The left regards any assertion of American national identity -- not merely flag-waving -- as chauvinism bordering on fascism. When the left charges Americans who fear the dilution of American national identity that could follow citizenship for tens of millions of illegal immigrants with "xenophobia," and "racism," it is not only a cynical attempt to cultivate Latino votes for the Democratic Party. It is also a sincere belief that conservative concerns about American national identity are reminiscent of chauvinist bigotry.

The most obvious example of left-wing opposition to American nationalism is its cultivation of "multiculturalism" as a replacement for American national identity. For the left, American citizens are no longer Americans first and foremost; we are African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic- or Latino-Americans, Native-Americans, etc. The left celebrates what precedes the hyphen far more than the "American" that follows it. As a result, America no longer instills traditional American values and an American identity on either those born here or in its immigrants, which is the reason for the right's concern over illegal immigration, not bigotry and xenophobia.

A fourth lesson the left learned from Nazism has been that no judging of cultures is permissible. Because the Nazis deemed Jews and others as inferior, we are no longer allowed to judge other cultures. In the post-World War II world of the left, all cultures are equal. To say that the contemporary Islamic world, or that black inner city culture, has serious moral problems that these cultures need to address is to be labelled dangerously racist -- again reminiscent, for the left, of the Nazis who declared other groups (inherently) defective. For the left, the only cultures one may judge adversely are white American and religious Jewish and Christian.

Fifth and finally, the left has affirmed pacifism as an ideal. One would think that the most obvious moral and rational lesson to be learned from the Nazi experience is the need to fight evil. After all, if decent nations were not as militarily strong as they were, and were not as prepared as they were to use that might, the Nazis would not have been defeated, and many millions more "non-Aryans" would have been enslaved and murdered. But the left, including, sad to say, Germany, did not draw that lesson. Instead of learning to fight evil, the left has learned that fighting is evil -- and it has taught this to two generations of Americans.

To amend Santayana's famous dictum, it is those who learn the wrong lessons from history who are condemned to repeat it.

SOURCE

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Four Decades Eroding the Foundation of Liberty

The Supreme Court over the past four decades has issued some decisions that not only defied the Constitution, but imposed changes on our society that go so far as to challenge fundamental principles of our civilization.

For example, our Founding Fathers believed all men are endowed by their creator with an inalienable right to life - a principal derived not only from natural law, but also from the commandment thou shall not kill.

In 1973, the court said that the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War to ensure equal protection of the law to all people in the United States, protected the right of a woman to contract with a doctor to kill an unborn child.

Since then, tens of millions of unborn babies have been denied their right to life.

In 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court turned back a challenge to the Georgia law that prohibited same-sex sodomy.

In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger made a telling point. "I join the court's opinion, but I write separately to underscore my view that, in constitutional terms, there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy," said Burger.

"As the court notes, the proscriptions against sodomy have very 'ancient roots,'" he said. "Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards."

"To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching," said Burger.

Seventeen years later, in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court did just that. It reversed Bowers and declared that same-sex sodomy was indeed a right.

This time, Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent, pointed to the opinion the court had so recently issued in Bowers - and warned that declaring sodomy a right might be only the beginning.

"State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices," said Scalia.

SOURCE

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Why Liberal Ideology Doesn't Work

41% of net new jobs created in November were government jobs. That's not progress, that's alarming. 40% of the population shouldn't be employed by the government unless you live in North Korea.

As a consequence, the unemployment rate dropped, but this is an empty statistic. The government could hire every unemployed person in the U.S. tomorrow, but the government doesn't create wealth, no new added value is made to our nation. In fact the opposite is true, government employees, though clearly many of them are absolutely necessary, have a net negative effect on wealth creation because they have to be paid through the taxes paid from the wealth created by others.

This is precisely why government should remain as limited as possible, because even necessary positions are a drain on the economy and on growth and prosperity.

This is a man that I have had come speak at the Wylie Tea Party before.  I love him because his posts are thoughtful, thought provoking, and accurate. Clearly he does his research.

What he has to say should scare every American to the core.  With the data he provided, let us consider a few simple math facts and consider what they mean:

An astounding 40% of the US population is now employed by the Federal Government

A rather inaccurate 7% are unemployed (and we know this number is closer to 14% because it does not include those who have stopped looking or those who should be employed full time but have only been able to find part time work).

Then we must consider that portion of the US population not working and not considered part of the unemployed.  Retirees represent roughly 13% of the US population according to the US Census reports, and children represent roughly 20%.

If we take all these numbers and add them together, what does this all mean?

It means that 40% of the population are sucking our tax dollars from the system and not creating tax dollars (oh sure they pay taxes on their income, but they are merely putting back a small portion of tax dollars back into the tax pool they sucked it from). These tax suckers are coupled with 7% of the unemployed, and 33% of those not of working age.  This totals to an astounding 80% of the population not working.

That number should scare the living excrement out of you.  The fact is only 20% of the US population are creating any national wealth or contributing to it. That number is insane and most certainly not sustainable, which is one reason why we have an incredible deficit on our hands. We prove every time the Democrats want to increase the debt ceiling that our economy is not sustainable. What I don't understand is just what part of that data Democrats don't understand?  If you are voting with the Democrats then  you are supporting the eventual doom of our country, especially when our policies limit how much of our own resources we sell to other countries.  It is pretty simple math, folks and the big fat negative number continues to grow.

Now imagine if our government focused on creating jobs rather than doling out tax dollars.  Just what sort of wealth might our population create? This is why liberal ideology does not work because it is not sustainable.  This is why our economy is in the condition it is in.

Regardless of whether you appreciate the Tea Party or Constitutional Conservatives, this is why we are right and our way is the only way that will bring our economy back around without putting us further into debt.  Robbing Peter to pay Paul for job creation is a very bad plan and I would challenge every liberal to prove how their plan can possibly work longer-term.

SOURCE

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