#10 – expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences #9 – creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide and human cloning #8 – expanding judicial oversight of military detentions and CIA interrogations #7 – prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools #6 – banning the death penalty #5 – requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights #4 – creating new constitutional rights to massive government welfare and medical care programs #3 – stripping "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance #2 – eroding property rights #1 – ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriage
Of course, this “conservative nightmare” is a “liberal dream” for Obama's most enthusiastic supporters. Read full article...
*Under Obama's plan, restaurant owners are incentivized NOT to open new restaurants says former Oklahoma state senator. Obama on raising taxes: They can afford it.*
Former White House economic advisor Larry Lindsey is concerned that
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama's plans to reform Social
Security may actually transform it into a new, federal "welfare"
program.
The current top level of Social Security taxation is $102,000.
Under Obama's plan, those with incomes over $250,000 will have to pay
higher taxes, while taxpayers who make between $102,000 and $250,000
would be protected and not have to pay new Social Security taxes.
Essentially, Lindsey said, if Obama's plan for Social Security
reform is adopted, upper income taxpayers with an income of $250,000 or
above, which comprise about 3 percent of the population in the U.S.,
will be subsidizing the retirements of upper middle class taxpayers and
middle class taxpayers.
Interestingly, this would also take overall income tax rates to a level much higher than in the 1990s, Lindsey said.
Back in the 1990s, income, and Social Security taxes totaled 40
percent of income, but under Obama the overall rate would go up to 53
percent.
"Plus you you will have state and city taxes, and that will take it
up to 60 percent for some," said Lindsey. "That will make it difficult
for Wall Street to attract talent in New York and New Jersey, which
have city and state taxes, versus London, where taxes are just at 40
percent."
So basically only high-income taxpayers will wind up paying more if Obama is elected president in November.
What's more, even though higher income taxpayers will be taxed,
they will receive no new retirement benefits from Social Security.
According to estimates from the Tax Policy Center, those groups
could end up paying anywhere from several thousand of dollars to tens
of thousands of dollars more to Uncle Sam than they currently do.
Obama hasn't said whether the money from wages and salaries over $250,000 would be taxed at the same rate.
"For someone making $200,000 or $250,000 today, Social Security
is still going to be a major part of their retirement," said Lindsey.
"It is not a welfare plan. It is 20 to 25 percent of retirement income.
This is one of the New Deal programs that has had a lot of staying
power."
The reason Obama reportedly picked the $250,000 level of income
for more taxation is that he is targeting independent voters in the
$103,000-$249,000 income bracket in battleground states, says Lindsey.
Voters in that income bracket will not be taxed under Obama's plan.
"They really don't want to apply a tax at that level because
there is a lot of votes there," said Lindsey. "There's a lot of voters
there in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Politics is trumping good
program design."
"A high-income entrepreneur would see his or her federal marginal
tax rate rise to 53 percent from 37.7 percent," Lindsey wrote in a June
20 Wall Street Journal op-ed column.
The marginal tax rate is
what a person pays on each additional dollar earned. Lindsey wrote that
Obama's plans would provide a powerful incentive for the
highest-earning Americans to work less, invest less and contribute less
to the economy.
Former Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, a Republican,
agreed. A person who owns two restaurants and makes $500,000 a year
would have little incentive to open a third restaurant under Obama's
tax plans, and might even close one, Nickles said in an interview.
"He's not going to be hiring more people," Nickles said.
A New Tone has more thoughts on this Obama's Marxist ideas for America.
UPDATE:This is frightening--Volokh Conspiracy
writes about a new "Change" group that is going to kick off in
September. The group "is not just calling for individuals to get
involved, but it is calling for a new National Service Act that will
involve the government in transforming American society." Hat Tip Pat R.
'Global Poverty Act' to cost each U.S. citizen $2,500 or more
The U.S. Senate soon could debate whether you, your spouse and each
of your children – as well as your in-laws, parents, grandparents,
neighbors and everyone else in America – each will spend $2,500 or more
to reduce poverty around the world.
The plan sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama,
the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is estimated to cost
the U.S. some $845 billion over the coming few years in an effort to
raise the standard of living around the globe.
Barack Obam
S.2433 already has been approved in one form by the U.S. House of
Representatives and now has been placed on the Senate Legislative
Calendar for pending debate.
WND previously reported
the proposal demands the president develop "and implement" a policy to
"cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt
relief" and other programs.
Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media
has published a critique asserting that while the Global Poverty Act
sounds nice, the adoption could "result in the imposition of a global
tax on the United States" and would make levels of U.S. foreign aid
spending "subservient to the dictates of the United Nations."
He said the legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the
U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years, he
said, would amount to $845 billion "over and above what the U.S.
already spends."
The plan passed the House in 2007 "because most members didn't
realize what was in it," Kincaid reported. "Congressional sponsors have
been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that
it would require."
A recent statement from Obama's office noted the support offered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the
world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and
tragedies the international community faces," Obama said. "It must be a
priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme
poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking
water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this
important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in
the developing world.
"Our commitment to the global economy must extend beyond trade
agreements that are more about increasing profits than about helping
workers and small farmers everywhere," he continued.
Another critic, however, has been commentator Glenn Beck, whose YouTube video critique can be seen here:
"Not one dime would go to fixing America," the commentary said.
Obama has continued to lobby for such massive expenditures on his
campaign stops. During an address as recently as last week, he said,
"I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it
to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in
Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease."
Beck and Kincaid pointed out that the plan not only commits the U.S.
to the anti-poverty spending proposal, it also adopts for the U.S. the
United Nations Millennium Development Goal, which includes a variety of
treaties and protocols advocated by the U.N.
"On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared "all-out war
on human poverty and unemployment in these United States." This
"all-out war" would last through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford,
Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. We have spent
billions of dollars fighting this war, and what have we achieved?"
He continued, "Very little. In 1964, there were 36 million Americans
living in poverty, or about 19 percent of the population. In the 40
years between 1964 and 2004:
... poverty never measured less than 11 percent of the population. In
1983, under President Reagan, poverty registered 15.2 percent; in 1993, at the beginning of Bill
Clinton's presidency, poverty was measured at 13.7 percent of the
population. In 2004, under George W. Bush, a president often accused by
the political Left as not caring about the poor, the poverty rate
declined to 12.7 percent. Still, some 37 million Americans remain poor."
Despite that performance, "Obama is ready to take the fight global," said Lester.
"In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration
commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying
a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court
Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on
Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the
Child," he wrote.
Tom DeWeese at NewsWithViews said the plan "is very telling" about what Obama would do as president.
DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, warned the
over-arching plan includes the ideals of consolidating all
international agencies under the U.N., regulation by the U.N. of all
corporate environmental issues, license fees charged by the U.N. to use
air, water and natural resources, a restructuring that would give
hand-picked non-governmental organizations huge influence, authorize a
standing U.N. army and require registration of all arms.
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