President Barack Obama recently released a list of 121 proposed program terminations and reductions, that he claims would save taxpayers $17 billion. Obama has described these program terminations as spending “cuts”. This is simply not true. Every dollar that Obama “cuts” he has immediately turned into new spending elsewhere in the budget. At least his request last month for a total of $100 million in cuts from this year’s budget were real spending cuts (all be it pitifully small ones). So this is what Obama’s fiscal responsibility record really looks …
Environmental Group Will Sue Small Business The Center for Biological Diversity confirmed what I have long feared. In comments made to the Wall Street Journal the special interest group stated they will sue for the regulation of small emitters under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act. Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying her group is prepared to sue for regulation of smaller emitters if the EPA stops at simply large emitters. Special interest groups around …
First the good news: earlier this week President Barack Obama admitted that high taxes kill jobs. Now the bad news: he wants to raise taxes on U.S. companies anyway. Pitching his new tax reform plan Monday President Obama said that our tax code “says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York.” As the Wall Street Journal quipped: “That sounds like a great argument for lowering taxes on the guy creating jobs in Buffalo. Alas, that’s …
April 30 was the last day for the planning department of Petaluma, Calif. The city decided to axe the department after it became clear that development activity was not generating sufficient revenue to cover the department’s expenses. As of March, the department was running a deficit of $280,000 for the fiscal year, which ends in June. Too few developers were applying for building permits or otherwise making use of the department’s fee-generating services. In 1972, Petaluma became the first city in the country to attempt to control growth through limiting …
The results aren’t officially out yet, but it looks like 14 of the 19 financial firms subjected to “stress tests” by the Treasury Department passed their exams with flying colors. Now, the question is will they be allowed to return the money they borrowed from taxpayers? Many of them want to. But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been dragging his feet on the issue indicating that repayment might not be allowed for even healthy banks if the government doesn’t think that general economic conditions are favorable. That policy drew a …
Just when you thought the Second Amendment would be the only issue we wouldn’t debate this summer. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9X2VbhSH9o&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The 2009 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) is wrapping up in Houston, Texas and unsurprisingly, the message down here remains: drill, baby, drill. But that message has been echoed by panelists from both sides of the aisle. Despite reinstatement of the bans on offshore drilling and no mention of offshore drilling in the Waxman-Markey energy bill, $4-a-gallon gas still lingers in the back of peoples’ minds. One panelist at OTC said parents kids remind their parents constantly about the vacation they had to cancel. High gas prices ate away at consumers’ …
President Obama today released a list of 121 proposed program terminations and reductions, at a savings of $17 billion. It is important for any president to get acclimated to the idea of streamlining government, and this exercise can be the first step. Many of the programs that President Obama has asked to eliminate – particularly in transportation, education, and health – are functions best left to state and local governments anyway. One concern, however, is that defense accounts for nearly half the cuts even though it constitutes only 20 percent …
The Center for Public Integrity has a new project up called The Subprime 25 that identifies the “top 25 lenders who were responsible for nearly $1 trillion of subprime loans made from 2005 through 2007. Together, the companies account for about 72 percent of high-priced loans reported to the government at the peak of the subprime market. Securities created from subprime loans have been blamed for the economic collapse from which the world’s economies have yet to recover.” Guess who is at the top of the list? Countrywide Financial. But …
The reason cap-and-trade and carbon tax have been used interchangeably in the global warming debate is because they are essentially the same thing: a massive tax on energy. Although a more direct approach would be to tax carbon dioxide, it does not make it any more acceptable. But this tax is different because the revenue generated will be given back to the people, presumably. When has that happened? Can we honestly believe every dollar extracted from Americans from a cap-and-trade or a carbon tax will be given back in the …
