Bowe..."BREATHE"...

Obama might NOT get you home 

but 'We the People' somehow, someway will.

The Fair Tax

John Linder  Townhall Columnist

We have heard the promise of fundamental tax reform for about two years now. It seems that there is some agreement on reducing the numbers of deductions and reducing some tax rates. You will recall that we did that in 1986 and 25 years later it cannot be noticed.

It was disclosed in the last year that the IRS harassed conservative groups and disclosed the confidential information of individuals. It strikes me that this is the perfect opportunity to change the entire way we fund the government. It is time to say goodbye to the IRS.

We should take this opportunity to abolish the IRS and begin to collect the necessary funds to run the government by taxing consumption instead of income.

There are two approaches to taxing income. The value added tax is used by many nations. It taxes each addition of value to a product in its manufacturing. Milton Friedman once said that it was the most efficient way to raise taxes and the easiest way to increase the size of government.

The second consumption tax is the retail sales tax that is used by 45 states to fund their governments.

I am a supporter of the sales tax. I was the original sponsor of the FairTax in 1999 as a Member of Congress from Georgia. Today it is the most extensively researched and broadly supported tax reform measure before the Congress. It is an entire paradigm shift from how we have been funding our government for the last 100 years.

The FairTax repeals all taxes on income: no more income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains or death taxes. If you make $52,000 a year your weekly check will be $1,000. Since the average income tax today is 15% and the employee’s portion of the payroll tax is 7.65%, the average take-home pay will increase by 29%.

The tax on income will be replaced by a tax on the purchase of new goods and services. The rate will be 23% of what you pay for at the check out counter. That is not 23% on top of the marked price, but 23% included in the price. If the item you buy is priced at $100, the merchant will keep $77 and send $23 to the government.

There has been some confusion about this method of calculation since states calculate their sales tax as a tax on top of what you buy. However, since we are replacing a tax that is calculated “inclusive” of what you earn rather than on top of what you earn we concluded that to use an “inclusive” rate would be more honest. Both the state and the retailer would be paid for collecting the tax.

To lessen the burden on those who spend all of their income on necessities, we untax necessities by providing a cash distribution to every family, based on the size of the family.

How do we define necessities? The federal government makes a determination each year as to how much it costs a given sized family to buy its essential purchases. For a single person that number is $11,490. For a family of four it is $31,020. The PRE-bate, coming at the beginning of each month, for a family of four will be $595. Used goods are not taxed. Nothing should be taxed more than once.

To receive the prebate, each family will provide the name, birth date, address and Social Security number of each member of the family just as is done today with Food Stamp applications. That data will be crosschecked against Social Security records to ensure accuracy before an electronic transfer is made.

A study by Dr. David Tuerck, Chairman of the Economics Department and Executive Director of the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston, concludes that the FairTax-generated revenues would have exceeded actual revenues by $171 billion in 2009 and $267 billion in 2010.

Repealing the code and abolishing the IRS will end the abuses that we have all become familiar with.

That agency is out of control and cannot be “fixed.”

Businesses will be able to do their planning based on the interests of their shareholders, their employees and their customers. Government will no longer have a seat at the table. You will make your personal decisions regarding how to save, invest and donate based on what you choose to do without any tax considerations.

Studies show that 22% of what you currently spend represents the embedded costs of our current tax code. By eliminating those costs, competition will drive them out of the price system. The combination of reduced prices and increased take-home pay will give those who spend all of their income on living expenses a 22% increase in purchasing power.

Twenty trillion dollars, now sitting in offshore financial centers, will pour into our markets, our banks and our businesses creating a booming economy and millions of jobs.

The FairTax rewards hard work and savings and taxes consumption. And, for the first time in over 100 years we will tax wealth rather than wages. We will tax what we take out of society rather than what we put into it.

Eliminating the 73,000 pages of current regulations will save the $500 billion to $1 trillion that we spend each year just to comply with the code and remit our share. Paying nearly a trillion dollars to comply with a law that collects less than three trillion dollars is worse than inefficient…it is stupid!

Moving to a consumption tax will make each of us voluntary taxpayers. We will pay taxes when we choose, as much as we choose, by how we choose to spend and we will be given the greatest gift a free society has to give…anonymity. No government agency should know more about us than we are willing to tell our children!

Our Clueless President

Michael Reagan  Townhall Columnist
 

Let me get this straight.

For five years Barack Obama has been president.

For five years he’s demonstrated -- with amazing consistency -- that he has no clue what we need to get out of the ditch and back on the road to real economic recovery.

He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he can’t work with a divided Congress and he can’t, or just plain won’t, lean on Harry Reid to allow the Senate to vote on the stack of jobs bills that has been sent over by the House.

The president clearly has learned nothing on the job. And now our multi-clueless commander in chief is so frustrated that he’s not getting his way with Congress, he’s starting to issue decrees like some tin-pot socialist South American dictator.

That’s what Obama did this week when he called on Congress to pass his latest list of tried-and-not-true ideas for resurrecting the economy.

If Congress didn’t enact his pet policies -- a federal minimum wage hike, another unemployment insurance extension, funding for universal preschool, etc. -- the president decreed, he was going to wield his executive super-powers.

“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” he bragged, “I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive action and administrative actions that move the ball forward.”

Trouble is, the president is one of the few guys on the field who doesn’t realize that the ball he wants to move forward has been out of air for almost a century.

The most powerful leader on the planet still doesn’t get it when it comes to economic policy -- and obviously never will.

He still thinks like a naïve 20-something community organizer from South Chicago who has never had to meet a payroll or raise a dime of capital.

He still believes in the 1930s New Deal myth that it’s the government that creates prosperity and growth, not free-market capitalism.

And he still doesn’t understand that it is lower tax rates, federal spending cuts and less government regulation that encourage businesses to expand, create jobs and hire people.

In Obama-Think, passing a law to jack up the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance for six months and throwing billions in subsidies at shaky solar companies are considered magical ways to stimulate a sluggish economy and create jobs.

In the real world, as we’ve seen for the last five years, it works the opposite way.

When one political party passes laws making it more costly for businesses to hire humans, companies learn to streamline and get by with fewer humans or hire humans in foreign lands. Can you spell Obamacare?

When jobs become too costly, they get destroyed and they never come back -- by the millions. Can you count a record 92 million people not participating in the workforce?

The only way our slow boat to permanent economic stagnation is going to be turned around is if we return to the economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s.

That’s when a pair of economically savvy presidents named Reagan and Clinton made sure tax and regulatory policies did not cripple the ability of capitalism to create economic growth, prosperity and jobs.

It doesn’t matter how many lightly taxed and lightly regulated “Promise Zones” President Obama sets up in North Carolina or Texas with a wave of his mighty pen.

The whole country needs to be turned into a permanent “Promise Zone.” But that’s never going to happen as long as we have someone in the White House who doesn’t appreciate or like the free market and doesn’t know the difference between capitalism and cronyism.

Al Qaeda behind 95% of world's suicide bombings

From Jihad Watch / Posted by Robert Spencer

Hardest hit: Robert Pape, who several years ago published with great fanfare a study that purported to show that most suicide terror is committed by non-Muslims. Not only was Pape wrong; he was on the dole of Hamas-linked CAIR.

"Study warns of growing threat to Israel from Al-Qaeda," by Avi Issacharoff for the Times of Israel, January 14:

A team of researchers at an Israeli institute has found a surge in the number of suicide attacks in the last decade, with al-Qaeda behind the lion’s share of them. 

A new report by the Institute for National Security Studies indicates a steep rise in the number of suicide bombings since the turn of the century, with 2013 seeing a jump over the year prior.

Researchers also found a growing threat of al-Qaeda terror activity against Israel, even though the Jewish state has yet to be significantly targeted.

The study was authored by Yoram Schweitzer, head of the institute’s terrorism research program, and researchers Einat Yogev and Yotam Rosner.

From the 1980s, when suicide bombings first came on the scene, until 2000, the majority of the approximately 200 such bombings were carried out by the Lebanese Shiite terror group Hezbollah.

Since 2000, however, around 3,500 suicide bombings have been recorded. The turning point came following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

In all, al-Qaeda and jihadist groups have tallied more than 85 percent of the total suicide attacks worldwide, but in 2013 that figure rose to nearly 95%, the INSS study found.

Despite the relatively low number of suicide bombings compared to other tactics employed by terror groups, they resonate strongly thanks to both the number of lives they claim and their attack on public morale.

In the past year, terrorist groups launched 291 suicide attacks in 18 countries, killing around 3,100 people — a 25% rise in attacks compared to the year prior....

Op-ed:
The newly released bi-partisan Benghazi report tells us NOTHING we didn't already know
By: Diane Sori

"In spite of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi and ample strategic warnings, the United States Government simply did not do enough to prevent these attacks and ensure the safety of those serving in Benghazi.”
- Senator Saxby Chambliss, ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee.

Well our ever-LYING, traitor-in-chief and his cohort in crime Hillary 'What Does It Matter' Clinton are in big trouble...as they should be...as the ghosts of Benghazi have come back to haunt.

Benghazi can now NO longer be called a 'phony scandal' by Barack HUSSEIN Obama or by Hillary Clinton for the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee's just released 'supposedly' comprehensive 85 page report...that is anything but...officially stated what some of us have said since day one...that the attack on our Benghazi compound was indeed a preventable terrorist attack and that any and all policy for handling the attack aftermath was done for political expediency alone.

Calling to task the entire Obama administration's response to Benghazi and to the fact that 15 people who tried to help the FBI investigate the attack have been killed, this report still rightly faults Hillary's State Department for failing to increase security after deliberately ignoring Ambassador Stevens' many pleas for help, and despite “ample strategic warnings” from the CIA stating that because the danger of militant attacks was increasing throughout eastern Libya, that U.S. personnel “were at risk.”

"The bottom line is Hillary Clinton wanted the appearance of normalization" in Libya...Security was not driving these decisions. Politics was," said Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

Yet NOTHING about Benghazi was normal as Benghazi became and remains despite this anything but 'comprehensive report,' a tale of murder, cover-ups, and LIES all put in place to protect at all costs the 'anointed one' and the woman next in line to that title. And yet NO matter how those in Obama's orbit try to divert the truth, the fact remains that the attack on Benghazi was terrorism...TERRORISM...and that fact must NO longer be glossed over.

And this report comes late to the critical fact that Barack HUSSEIN Obama knew damn well that both he and Hillary were LYING through their teeth when they deliberately, calculatingly, and with malice intended, intentionally told 'We the People' over and over that the attack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and ex-Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty was because the what were 'peaceful' demonstrations over the video got out of hand.

This report NO matter its true intentions...whether good or bad...tells us NOTHING we already didn't know even as it lays out that in the first hours after the attack began that every single Pentagon military briefer and defense department official...including General Carter Ham (then head of AFRICOM) and Marine Corps Colonel George Bristol (commander of AFRICOM's Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region)...who briefed the White House referred to Benghazi as a terrorist attack and NOT as a response to an anti-American demonstration to a poorly made YouTube video critical of mohamed and islam.

In fact, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey told those on the House Armed Services Committee (the committee conducting the actual investigation) that when they briefed Obama as the attack was ongoing, that it was al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda's regional affiliates (AQIM, Ansar al-Sharia, AQAP, and the Mohammad Jamal Network) who orchestrated and carried out the attack. And when Republican committee member Senator Jim Inhofe (OK) asked whether Panetta...who directly briefed Obama...believed "unequivocally" at the time that it was a terrorist attack, Panetta said, "There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack."

Also faulting the intelligence agencies for NOT telling the U.S. military in Libya about the existence of the CIA outpost at the Benghazi compound, the report NEVER touches upon the possibility that maybe the omission was deliberate on the intelligence agencies part because they were covering for the CIA who themselves had something to hide...as in their duplicity in helping Obama run guns and weapons to the al-Qaeda backed Syrian rebels...just saying.

Simply, the President of the United States knowingly and willfully LIED to the American people, to the victim's families, to the media, and to our troops in the field that a farce of a video cost four Americans their lives. And he did this because (I believe) he had to cover-up his own...and possibly Hillary's...involvement in a constitutionally ILLEGAL and outright criminal guns and weapons smuggling operation to the al-Qaeda backed Syrian rebels that Ambassador Stevens found out about and was going to expose...I have said this since day one and I stand by these words.

Obama knew the truth about Benghazi being a carefully planned terrorist attack opportunistically coordinated to mark the 9/11 eleventh year anniversary...he knew it all along and I still wonder if he had a direct hand in it as Stevens had to be silenced at all costs...yet he spewed...as did Hillary...his carefully concocted LIE in the hopes that Benghazi...along with its four 'bumps in the road'... would just go away especially with the presidential election coming up. And this thought is critical for I believe Barack HUSSEIN Obama hoped that his LIES would help Benghazi go away so that his standing by his video bloviations would appear to his muslim brethren...to whom his true allegiances lie...that he was defending the prophet mohamed against the American infidels.

You think I'm kidding...I'm NOT as Obama's actions or lack thereof NOT only in relation to Benghazi, but in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan as well, speak volumes as to whose side he's really on. And proof of that is that the report cited the failure of the Obama administration to "bring the attackers to justice," meaning nobody believed to be involved in the attack or in the cover-up of the attack...as in Hillary Clinton...has gone to jail yet alone been arrested...that is except for the hapless Coptic film maker who made a cheap YouTube video showing mohamed and islam to be the joke we all know they are.

“I hope this report will put to rest many of the conspiracy theories and political accusations about what happened in Benghazi," said Intelligence Chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) upon the report's release, but truth be told all this report does is raise even more questions...questions that must be answered for a sitting U.S. president NOT only LIED to the American people...again...but might also be complicit in the death of four Americans who he watched die in real time before jetting off to yet another fundraiser...and that is NO conspiracy theory or political accusation...that is documented fact.

And so NO matter what the report states...or what the alphabet media decides to report or NOT report it states...the fact remains that Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his cohort in crime Hillary 'What Does It Matter' Clinton are still free to sit back in their cushy chairs relishing in the fact that for now at least they've pulled another one off on 'We the People'...oh where the hell is someone to arrest these two...where the hell are they...