Brutally Honest

Cronyism in America?

By Chuck aka XtnYoda

The Chevy "Volt" ... a pretty expensive taxpayer adventure ... mandated by the federal government.

Volt costing taxpayers up to $250,000 per car?

Analyst: 'This might be the most government-supported car since the Trabant'

Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle...

 I thought you might want to know.

Why Your Tax Bill Might Surge Next Year

By Chuck aka XtnYoda

Are you ready for about a $3,500 dollar surge in your taxes next year? According to this report from Yahoo Finance News this is exactly what is going to happen to many Americans.

Is congress forewarning you about the coming rather dramatic increases?

In a recent tax planning meeting with one of our clients, we shocked them with what their income tax future looked like for 2013 if Congress continues to do nothing to provide a long-term permanent set of tax laws (and it looks as if lawmakers are headed down this track).

They had no idea what tax breaks were expiring this year and next year, and how much it would cost them personally in extra income tax. But they aren't alone, many Americans and even tax professionals aren't aware that their tax bill could rise dramatically next year.

These clients are your average American family and their situation is a good example of the law changes that will affect all of us. Here's their tax situation with a table summarizing the expiring tax laws that are scheduled to occur in 2011 and 2012.

Meet the Smiths: 26-year-olds Bill and Joan have been married for five years and have two young children. Bill earns about $65,000 a year in sales and Joan has gone back to work and earns about $35,000 annually. Bill owes quite a bit on his college student loans and will pay about $3,000 in interest on them in 2013. With Joan working again, they are paying $3,000 for year-round child care. Joan inherited some AT&T stock from her grandmother, which pays her $1,000 in dividends every year. Finally, counting home mortgage interest, they have about $20,000 in itemized deductions.

The first big change affecting the Smiths will be a combined increase in income tax rates, and a tightening of tax brackets as a result of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. We estimate this will cost them $960 in 2013.

Bill will lose the complete deduction of his student loan interest in 2013, costing about $840. The pair's allowable deduction for child care will drop to $2,400 from $3,000, and they will also see their credit for children drop in half, costing another $1,000.

The marriage tax penalty will come roaring back to hit the Smiths in 2013, costing an estimated $500. The tax on their dividend income will go increase to $280 from $150, adding another $130. Finally, although we did not calculate the effect, without Congressional action to once again "fix" the alternative minimum tax, the Smiths could owe this ugly tax as well!

Luckily for the Smiths — but not for many Americans — other major changes for 2013, which do not personally affect them, include a phase out of itemized deductions and personal exemptions if their income starts to climb.

In summary, because of tax laws expiring this year and next, we estimate that the Smiths will owe $3,598 more in income tax in 2013 than in 2011 with no change in their income.

Major Individual Income Tax Benefits Expiring 12/31/2011:

• Personal tax credits applied against income tax no longer apply

• Higher alternative minimum tax exemptions revert back to extraordinarily-low thresholds

• $250 school teacher expense deduction ends

• Mortgage insurance premium deduction expires

• State and local sales tax deductions expire

• Tuition and related fees deduction end

• IRA to charity tax-free transfers stop

• 2% Social Security tax reduction ends

Major Individual Income Tax Benefits Expiring 12/31/2012:

• Marriage penalty equalization ends

• Dividends taxed at capital gains rates removed, taxed at regular rates now

• Capital gains low tax rates expires

• Removal of itemized deduction phase out for higher income Americans

• Removal of personal exemption phase out for higher income Americans

• Child care deduction limit of $3,000 reverts to $2,400

• Child credit reduces from $1,000 per child to $500 per child

• Low 10% tax bracket for low income Americans is eliminated

• Lower income tax rates and smaller brackets expires

• Refundable adoption credit and reduced deduction

• American Opportunity college education credit expires

• Major reduction in earned income credits and refunds

• Income tax exemption for debt forgiven on home foreclosures and repossessions

• Deduction for student loan interest ends

• Education IRA limit drops from $2,000 to $500

Bob Jennings is a CPA, EA and CFP and author of "Understanding Social Security & Medicare."

Posted by FoxBusiness

Doesn't look like good news to me, and for the most part, it isn't news at all, at least as far as congress reporting this to our citizens is concerned.

Occupy Wall Street: Not our neighbors

Via Don Surber, a local New York resident who speaks for many:

"Frankly we're not interested in a good neighbor policy. The occupiers are not our neighbors," said Linda Gerstman, a board member at 15 Broad Street. "Our neighbors do not beat on drums while children are sleeping, our neighbors do not verbally attack people on their way to work, our neighbors do not break into our buildings and vandalize them, our neighbors do not urinate and defecate in the street. These occupiers need to vacate our neighborhood."

In Oakland, officials had the same sentiment and decided that enough was enough:

Under the cover of darkness early Tuesday, hundreds of police swept into Oakland's Occupy Wall Street protest, firing tear gas and beanbag rounds before clearing out an encampment that demonstrators had hoped would stir a revolution.

In less than an hour, the 2-week-old, miniature makeshift city was in ruins.

Scattered across the area were overturned tents, pillows, sleeping bags, yoga mats, tarps, backpacks, food wrappers and water bottles. Signs decrying corporations and police still hung from lampposts or lay on the ground.

Protesters had stayed awake through the night, waiting for the expected raid. Officers and sheriff's deputies from across the San 

Francisco Bay area surrounded the plaza in front of City Hall around 5 a.m. and closed in.

Eighty-five people were arrested, mostly on suspicion of misdemeanor unlawful assembly and illegal camping, police said.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Somebody's getting a little touchy

Ed Henry of Fox News bears the brunt of that touchiness today when he asked the President of the United States what seemed to be a rather innocuous question:

Someone should remind Mr. Obama that he's not a King.

Obama, Prince of Arabia

By tim, The Godless Heathen

In response to yesterday's post prodding us conservatives to acknowledge Pres. Obama’s leadership in the Arab world via the impending removal of Ghadaffi, allow me to retort.

What a sick, twisted joke.

As if this was what you all voted for.

The “change” you needed, the “hope” you were craving. What utter and complete nonsense by obvious desperate people painfully overeager to use everything and anything to help prop up your chosen failure of a leader. Suddenly, you’ve all found your inner nation building, war is necessary neo-conservatism. And you like it, you really like it! Now there’s no more “chickens are coming home to roost“, just “hum, roasted chicken, want some?”

You want everyone to think that this what you’ve always supported. Except when you didn’t.

You same folks were mysteriously silent when Ghadaffi turned in his WMD arsenal shortly after we invaded Iraq. That was trivial, a silly distraction to the more important constant and unrelenting ‘Bush lied’ attacks. You were too busy spouting off about how it was an illegal war, that millions of Iraqi civilians were being slaughtered and how we can’t be the world’s police force.

Well now, times have changed. Or rather, a Democrat occupies the White House so those things are completely irrelevant now.

Pres. Bush, along with his supporters, was unmercifully villified and unrelentingly condemned, still to this day, for spending a year groveling at the UN and getting the approval of our Congress to dispose of Saddam Hussein. A lunatic who gassed his own people, invaded Kuwait and set their oil wells afire and waged a decade long war with Iran, which killed millions, and included the use of WMD’s. While Pres. Obama spent a couple hours informing, (no approval needed evidentially for the Noble Peace Prize winner), the UN and a couple members of congress that he wanted to topple ole Muammar (before going on another vacation).

And we’re just expected to meekly climb on board and forget all that?

Think again.

Have we seen one news story about any civilian deaths in Libya? One? Am I to believe no civilian deaths occurred, that the bombs dropped by Pres. Obama miraculously didn’t injure, maim or kill anyone they were not intended for? Only under Pres. Bush could that happen we’re lead to believe.

Has there been even one war protest to speak of? In San Francisco, Madrid, London, anywhere?

I somehow missed Christiane Amanpour or any breathless reporter informing us that Libya was a quagmire after the predicted “couple of weeks” war waged on for five months. Along with all the hand wringing about how much deeper in debt it was causing us to be.

And what happened to Obama’s promised “Too often in the past we have dictated instead of listened” tender foot foreign policy approach? Which he skillfully used when the Iranians briefly rose up against the Mullahs. It was certainly more in step with his then base’s walk softly approach of “no wonder they hate us” Middle East foreign policy. Now suddenly we’re suppose to believe the Left has turned over a new leaf, that they rather like policing the world and they really enjoy determining the fate of other country’s leadership?

And all of us Neanderthal Conservatives are to just go along for the ride, to forget the Left’s red faced indignation, their self righteous screeds, their “War is not the answer” lamenting?

Only if you’re high on medical marijuana would you think we’ve forgotten the kabuki theatre of ‘peace through dialogue‘, and my personal favorite - we need to ‘better understand our enemies‘ (of which the then Sen. Obama wrote an op-ed eight days after 9/11/01). Not forgetting either the constant, idiotic cries of “jingoism”, the omnipresent labeling of America as “imperialistic” (still waiting for proof of) all neatly mixed with a grotesquely distorted and convoluted misuse of historical missteps of the USA into a bitter and sour cocktail of “America is the real terrorists”. Yup, that was tasty.

This forum doesn’t allow me to tell all you born again “chicken hawks” precisely where you can put your new found globe trotting, defenders of the oppressed, democracy is a universal right, war IS indeed the answer, ya’ hypocritical, chest thumbing jackwagons.

You’re so smart, you’ll figure it out.

"Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview all right?"

Of course, there won't be another interview because the interviewer directly challenged The One's assertions... and we can't have that now can we? (Note Obama's expressions in the video... the man is completely pissed off).

Hat tip to Beck's Blaze.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"People die in wars. They rarely die playing the games you play"

Joseph Schwerdt wrote those words and quite a few more to Lebron James when James tweeted something about refocusing, about having no friends except his fellow soldiers when he's at war.  That didn't sit well with Mr. Schwerdt.  At all:

Dear LeBron,

Just wanted to let you know: You are not at war. You are not a soldier.

What was said on your KingJames Twitter post?

"20+ games left in phase 2. I'm ReFOCUSED! No prisoners, I have no friends when at WAR besides my Soldiers."

You can tweet it all you want. But what you do and who you are is not even close to what they do and who they are.

You are probably a nice guy. And you are not the first athlete to compare sports to war; athletes to warriors; games to battle. I don't mean to single you out. But it is time to stop those comparisons.

War. Games. Not even close.

We are at war. Remember?

People die in wars. They rarely die playing the games you play. If they do, it is not because they are attacked or shot at or booby trapped by an enemy.

People lose limbs in war. Their bodies are torn apart by IEDs. Their legs and arms are ripped through by bullets and rockets.

You play in arenas in front of adoring fans. You don't walk streets in villages not knowing who the enemy is or what might be lurking on a roadside, around a corner or behind a door.

Athletes get concussions, serious business for sure. But soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen get post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. They lose their sight and their hearing in bomb blasts.

You travel to your games in the comfort of a chartered plane. You go home to an opulent mansion. You have little danger of coming home in a flag-draped box.

You carry a basketball, not a 50-pound backpack and a rifle. You wear sneakers, not boots. You wear a jersey, not a Kevlar vest.

In Afghanistan right now, soldiers and Marines are sleeping in bedrolls outside in the cold. They cook over an open flame. Think of that the next time you load up at the clubhouse buffet.

You chose to take your talents to South Beach. They chose to defend this country. We all make choices. Please choose not to compare yourself to a soldier or a Marine. Please choose not to say what you do is war or battle. It simply isn't.

I know you meant no disrespect to our fighting forces. But it is disrespectful. It underscores how little we know about what our service personnel go through and how much they and their families sacrifice.

Can't we remember that we are at war? That our men and women are dying? I often can think about nothing else.

I have two sons in the United States Marine Corps. One is in Afghanistan as I write this. He is in harm's way every day. Please pray that he comes home in one piece.

He is at war. You are not.

My other son is in the Marine reserves. Please pray he does not get deployed and put in danger. Then he'll be at war. You won't.

My brother served in Vietnam. Eighteen months. He came home, but many others didn't. He came home intact. Unfortunately, so are his memories.

He was at war. You never were.

My uncle died in World War II. His body was torn open during an attack on PT 154 near the Solomon Islands on the night of Nov. 13, 1943.

He died in battle. A basketball game is not a battle. It's a game.

His twin brother was captured around the same time after his plane was shot down over Germany. Years lost as a prisoner of war. Think of that the next time you consider taking no prisoners on the basketball court.

I just wanted to let you know. Not the same. Not even close.

Over the top?  Or right on the money?

Let us know in the comments.

H/T Big Peace.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"Setting a goal to raise energy prices..."

"... seems to be the last thing we would want to do as a nation."

That from William O'Keefe at The Examiner on Obama's renewable energy policy, a policy that is directly causing you and me to pay more at the pump:

This renewable energy mandate nationalizes a policy that has proven to be economically destructive in individual states across the nation as well as European nations. A recent study by the Institute for Energy Research shows that in the 29 states that have enacted a renewable energy standard like the one proposed by the president, energy prices are on average 40 percent higher.

Setting a goal to raise energy prices seems to be the last thing we would want to do as a nation. Federal regulators would have to make sacrifices as well.

The goal is unrealistic since today the green energy Obama likes, solar and wind, produce trivial amounts of energy in spite of very large subsidies. They are not commercially viable, and no amount of rhetoric will make them so.

The Environmental Protection Agency is making aggressive moves to regulate national emissions, even shutting down a previously approved mining operation in West Virginia this month. The Department of the Interior is still imposing a de facto moratorium on Gulf drilling permits for oil and gas despite public statements indicating otherwise.

Restraint appears an unlikely buzzword for the current administration.

If the honest communication displayed by the president in last night's address is the gold standard by which legislators are to approach the 2011 Congress, it appears we are in for another year of the same on Capitol Hill.

William Warren paints the picture for us a tad more graphically:

I continue to have a problem understanding why the Republicans aren't hammering Obama on this... seems to me to be a slam dunk for the party... it's really starting to piss me off.

Crosspsoted at Wizbang.

The Chamber FIRES Back

Posted by guest blogger Chuck aka XtnYoda.

Jake Tapper of ABC interviews Bruce Josten of the Chamber of Commerce.

Tapper is of course most focused on the White House's charging the United States Chamber of Commerce of accepting foreign funds to run political adds against the progressive movement in America.

And... does Jake get an ear full!

Chamber of Commerce responds

TAPPER: But why not just settle the dispute by opening your books?

JOSTEN: ....What this administration wants is a list of who the companies are who are contributors, and we saw last year, Jake, why, when we very publicly ran ads against the Patients Protections and Affordable Care Act, quoting the CBO, quoting the head of CMS, the Centers for Medicare Services, that it would not in fact bend the cost curve down, that it would bend the cost curve up as they testified before the senate finance committee, there was an attempt to try and find out who were the corporations that were contributing to that effort.

When some of those corporate names were divulged, not by us, by others, what did they receive? They received protests, they received threats, they were intimidated, they were harassed, they had to hire additional security, they were recipients of a host of proxies leveled at those companies that had nothing to do with the purpose of those companies. So we know what the purpose here is. It's to harass and intimidate....

TAPPER: But do you not understand why some people might say, “Let's just have full disclosure of everything”?

JOSTEN: ...Look, if you're in the business that we are in, you are audited annually by the IRS, your activities are reviewed consistently by the federal election commission and others, that's fine with us, because we comply with all the laws.

I think this has nothing to do with the suggestions here, I think this has to do with a desperate administration, trying to change the subject away from what they have been doing, which is what the American people want to talk about, which is economy and jobs. Not this.

.... I've explained to you, we're not going to subject our contributors to harassment, to intimidation, and to threats and to invasions of privacy at their houses and at their places of business, which is what has happened every time there's been disclosure here.

I would note that the same people, in this administration and the congressional majority, that supported the so-called DISCLOSE act. If you take a look at that legislation, Jake, you'll find fascinatingly that it somehow amazingly carves out the single biggest monolithic contributor to elections: organized labor. 420 million bucks in 2008....

Now... talk about "calling a spade a spade"... Mr. Josten is on fire the entire interview! You will want to read it all... then consider just how thuggish our White House administration has become.

It is a sad, dying, thrashing thing to behold... but rest assured... there is no pity for it's miserable, falling from grace, in the eyes of Americans.

PS.  The MSM is of course all over this.

"Barack Obama has abandoned America"

That coming from Debra Burlingame, Co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America:

Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see. Since that dark day, Americans have been asked to bear the burden of defending those values, again and again and again. Now this president declares that the victims of 9/11 and their families must bear another burden. We must stand silent at the last place in America where 9/11 is still remembered with reverence or risk being called religious bigots.

Muslims have worshipped in New York without incident both before and after the attacks of 9/11. This controversy is not about religious freedom. 9/11 was more than a “deeply traumatic event,” it was an act of war. Building a 15-story mosque at Ground Zero is a deliberately provocative act that will precipitate more bloodshed in the name of Allah. Those who continue to target and kill American civilians and U.S. troops will see it as a symbol of their historic progress at the site of their most bloody victory. Demolishing a building that was damaged by wreckage from one of the hijacked planes in order to build a mosque and Islamic Center will further energize those who regard it as a ratification of their violent and divinely ordered mission: the spread of shariah law and its subjugation of all free people, including secular Muslims who come to this country fleeing that medieval ideology, which destroys lives and crushes the human spirit.

We are stunned by the president’s willingness to disregard what Americans should be proud of: our enduring generosity to others on 9/11–a day when human decency triumphed over human depravity.

Go and finish that piece... then pass it on.

Ms. Burlingame couldn't be more right.

H/T Larwyn.

Crossposted at Wizbang.