The United States accounts for 5% of the world's population, but locks up nearly 25% of the world's prisoners.
The truth will set you free, avoiding it will imprison you. Americans have neglected their duty of self-government for so long, our kids are more likely to be put in jail than to be put in office. This author believes the answer to this growing crisis is for the american people to educate themselves on what they're giving government the authority to arrest them for. Leave people alone and they will strive for better lives.
The link that follows will take you to an article that I found enlightening that sheds some light on the financial and societal problems facing Americans today.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/07/jealous.prison.reform/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Atlas Shrugged Movie FINISHED
Part 1 of the movie Atlas Shrugged based on the controversial and mind-blowing novel by Ayn Rand is finished! The movie is set to be available in theater on tax day, April 15, 2011. There have been movie premiers already and the reviews are sensational, including a 'must see' endorsement from Sean Hannity. Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site!
I cannot put a higher endorsement on anything as I do regarding Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand. If this movie series even scratches the surface of the book, it could be the best series ever.
I cannot put a higher endorsement on anything as I do regarding Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand. If this movie series even scratches the surface of the book, it could be the best series ever.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
What an amazing fight goes on all around us! Can the government do things for individuals? Yes. Should it do everything it does? No. If you want to cut 100B from the budget, GET RID OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION! Brigham Young (famous religious guy) said it best:
I am opposed to free education as much as I am opposed to taking property from one man and giving it to another who knows not how to take care of it… I do not believe in allowing my charities to go through the hands of robbers who pocket nine-tenths themselves and give one tenth to the poor… Would I encourage free schools by taxation? No! (Brigham Young, via Quoty)
We had to pay our own schoolteachers, raise our own bread and earn our own clothing, or go without; there was no other choice. We did it then, and we are able to do the same to-day. I want to enlist the sympathies of the ladies among the Latter-day Saints, to see what we can do for ourselves with regard to schooling our children. Do not say you cannot school them, for you can… I understand that the other night there was a school meeting in one of the wards of this city, and a part there–a poor miserable apostate–said, “We want a free school, and we want to have the name of establishing the first free school in Utah.” To call a person a poor miserable apostate may seem like a harsh word; but what shall we call a man who talks about free schools and who would have all the people taxed to support them, and yet would take his rifle and threaten to shoot the man who had the collection of the ordinary light taxes levied in this Territory–taxes which are lighter than any levied in any other portion of the country? (Brigham Young, via Quoty)
I am opposed to free education as much as I am opposed to taking property from one man and giving it to another who knows not how to take care of it… I do not believe in allowing my charities to go through the hands of robbers who pocket nine-tenths themselves and give one tenth to the poor… Would I encourage free schools by taxation? No! (Brigham Young, via Quoty)
We had to pay our own schoolteachers, raise our own bread and earn our own clothing, or go without; there was no other choice. We did it then, and we are able to do the same to-day. I want to enlist the sympathies of the ladies among the Latter-day Saints, to see what we can do for ourselves with regard to schooling our children. Do not say you cannot school them, for you can… I understand that the other night there was a school meeting in one of the wards of this city, and a part there–a poor miserable apostate–said, “We want a free school, and we want to have the name of establishing the first free school in Utah.” To call a person a poor miserable apostate may seem like a harsh word; but what shall we call a man who talks about free schools and who would have all the people taxed to support them, and yet would take his rifle and threaten to shoot the man who had the collection of the ordinary light taxes levied in this Territory–taxes which are lighter than any levied in any other portion of the country? (Brigham Young, via Quoty)
Monday, May 3, 2010
See the below article, then read my comments at the end. Article comes from:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/26/costly-irs-mandate-slipped-into-health-bill/
----
Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill
Posted by Chris Edwards
Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.
A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.
Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress.
In a recent summary, tax information firm RIA notes the types of transactions covered by the new 1099 rules:
The 2010 Health Care Act adds “amounts in consideration for property” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(1)) and “gross proceeds” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(2)) to the pre-2010 Health Care Act categories of payments for which an information return to IRS will be required if the $600 aggregate payment threshold is met in a tax year for any one payee. Thus, Congress says that for payments made after 2011, the term “payments” includes gross proceeds paid in consideration for property or services.
Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.
Tax CPA Chris Hesse of LeMaster Daniels tells me:
Under the health legislation, the IRS could be receiving billions of more documents. Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments of rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when such payments are to entities other than corporations. Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases. And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations. This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.
There appears to have been little discussion before this damaging mandate was slipped into the health bill and rammed through Congress, but a few business groups did raise concerns. Here’s what the Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:
The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.
In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.
Private transactions are the core of a market economy, and the source of America’s growth and prosperity. Now the federal government is imposing a vast new web of red tape on perhaps billions of these growth-generating private exchanges.
For what purpose? So the spendthrift Congress can shake a few extra bucks out of private industry? The business sector is the generator of America’s high living standards, but most federal legislators just see it as a kitty to be raided or a cow to be milked dry.
I’m stunned that there wasn’t a broader debate before such a costly mandate was enacted. If it goes into effect, it will waste vast quantities of human effort in filling out forms, reworking computer systems, collecting and organizing data, and fighting the IRS. The struggling American economy can’t afford anymore suffocating tax regulations. This mandate is a giant deadweight loss. It should be repealed.
----
Do you think this could open up the incentive for an effective barter system? An online credit transfer system? Like eGold or eBullion where the transfer isn’t dollars but a weight of a specific commodity? We’re talking literally hundreds of billions of dollars in productive wealth lost nationally every year. This money doesn’t all go to the government as taxes as many think, this money will be wasted in compliance.
This WILL provide new jobs, at the expense of old jobs. Corporations will need SUBSTANTIALLY more accountants or paper-pushers as well as more attorneys to defend them from the IRS. This money will have to come from other areas such as increasing final cost or lowering current expenses such as lower priority services and lowering payroll elsewhere.
I think these necessary HUGE changes will cause many already struggling companies willing to make drastic changes and re-think their current business model and modus operandi. Were these companies offered a solution that is well implemented and quickly adaptable, a new market would emerge and regulations would be revealed as exactly what they are: anti-freedom, anti-life.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/26/costly-irs-mandate-slipped-into-health-bill/
----
Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill
Posted by Chris Edwards
Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.
A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.
Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress.
In a recent summary, tax information firm RIA notes the types of transactions covered by the new 1099 rules:
The 2010 Health Care Act adds “amounts in consideration for property” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(1)) and “gross proceeds” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(2)) to the pre-2010 Health Care Act categories of payments for which an information return to IRS will be required if the $600 aggregate payment threshold is met in a tax year for any one payee. Thus, Congress says that for payments made after 2011, the term “payments” includes gross proceeds paid in consideration for property or services.
Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.
Tax CPA Chris Hesse of LeMaster Daniels tells me:
Under the health legislation, the IRS could be receiving billions of more documents. Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments of rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when such payments are to entities other than corporations. Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases. And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations. This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.
There appears to have been little discussion before this damaging mandate was slipped into the health bill and rammed through Congress, but a few business groups did raise concerns. Here’s what the Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:
The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.
In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.
Private transactions are the core of a market economy, and the source of America’s growth and prosperity. Now the federal government is imposing a vast new web of red tape on perhaps billions of these growth-generating private exchanges.
For what purpose? So the spendthrift Congress can shake a few extra bucks out of private industry? The business sector is the generator of America’s high living standards, but most federal legislators just see it as a kitty to be raided or a cow to be milked dry.
I’m stunned that there wasn’t a broader debate before such a costly mandate was enacted. If it goes into effect, it will waste vast quantities of human effort in filling out forms, reworking computer systems, collecting and organizing data, and fighting the IRS. The struggling American economy can’t afford anymore suffocating tax regulations. This mandate is a giant deadweight loss. It should be repealed.
----
Do you think this could open up the incentive for an effective barter system? An online credit transfer system? Like eGold or eBullion where the transfer isn’t dollars but a weight of a specific commodity? We’re talking literally hundreds of billions of dollars in productive wealth lost nationally every year. This money doesn’t all go to the government as taxes as many think, this money will be wasted in compliance.
This WILL provide new jobs, at the expense of old jobs. Corporations will need SUBSTANTIALLY more accountants or paper-pushers as well as more attorneys to defend them from the IRS. This money will have to come from other areas such as increasing final cost or lowering current expenses such as lower priority services and lowering payroll elsewhere.
I think these necessary HUGE changes will cause many already struggling companies willing to make drastic changes and re-think their current business model and modus operandi. Were these companies offered a solution that is well implemented and quickly adaptable, a new market would emerge and regulations would be revealed as exactly what they are: anti-freedom, anti-life.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Why Everyone Wins With Free Trade
Awesome article I found online today:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/29/john-stossel-free-trade-american-companies-general-motors-ipod-mike-huckabee/
----
Why Everyone Wins With Free Trade
By John Stossel
- FOXNews.com
When free trade is unmolested, the world is richer and has more choices.
Trade is win-win. Two people trade only because each values what he gets more than what he gives up. That's why in a store both customer and clerk say, "Thank you."
At the international level, trade is also win-win because it allows countries to specialize in what they do well and trade the extra for things they don't make as well. When free trade is unmolested, the world is richer and has more choices.
But I keep hearing about unfair trade. I'm told that trade allows American companies to exploit people in poor countries and makes Americans jobless.
Tom Palmer of the Atlas Economic Research Institute, one of my guests on my Fox Business News show tomorrow night, says those are myths.
Do we exploit people in Third World countries?
"The evidence does not show that," Palmer said. "Multinational companies pay a wage premium. They pay more than local companies pay ... because they want to attract good workers. Look at the Shanghai factory of General Motors. They pay three times what Chinese-owned factories (pay)."
Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that liberalizing trade with Central America would exploit workers.
"People want to work at those factories. They line up. They compete. Are they competing to get exploited? They're competing for higher-wage jobs. I think that those people know their interests better than Nancy Pelosi does."
Sen. Byron Dorgan called free trade "a race to the bottom. This says to American workers if you can't compete against 30-cents-an-hour labor in some other country, you lose your job."
"Again, evidence doesn't support that," said Palmer. "Look at the iPod. It says, 'Manufactured in China.' But if you look in the back, it says, 'Designed in California.' Most of the value is added by American workers." My colleague at Fox News, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said, "In a country we can only be free if we can feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves. When we start outsourcing everything, that's a road to being enslaved."
"I hope that Gov. Huckabee thought about that when he was governor of Arkansas, and made sure there was no jobs outsourced to Virginia
or Texas," Palmer replied. "He should have protected the people of Arkansas, right?"
But that's different. We can count on Pennsylvania in a time of war. I don't know that I can count on China.
"If you're trading with them, it makes war much less likely," Palmer said. "We're not going to go to war with Canada. It's our biggest trading partner -- $600 billion a year going across the U.S.-Canada border in trade along the longest non-militarized border in the world. Five thousand miles, counting Alaska. That is trade creating peace."
As the French economist Frederic Bastiat put it, "When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."
Palmer offered another way to think about trade: as a machine -- "a machine that allows Florida farmers to turn oranges into (phones). They can't grow cell phones on their trees in Florida. They grow oranges really well. What they can do is take those oranges and trade them for cell phones."
And when people do this worldwide, they get richer. "Just like the case of you buying some coffee at the Starbucks. You could have made your own coffee. But your time might have been better spent doing something else. So you outsourced your coffee production. You made yourself better off. And that young lady who sold you the coffee made herself better off."
Palmer points out that China was once the most advanced society in the world. It had developed the clock, printing, the compass and more. Not coincidentally, while it was advancing technology and science, it was a major world trader.
"And it crumbled because they destroyed their trade. They made it illegal to trade with foreigners. And they turned inward. That set in process a stagnation that only now is being undone. We shouldn't do that to our country."
We're different, aren't we? We know how to make everything we need. "There's always opportunities for new progress. ... Remember watching "Star Trek" as a kid and they had that weird communicator? Everybody has one now. ... (T)rade made that possible."
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at www.johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/29/john-stossel-free-trade-american-companies-general-motors-ipod-mike-huckabee/
----
Why Everyone Wins With Free Trade
By John Stossel
- FOXNews.com
When free trade is unmolested, the world is richer and has more choices.
Trade is win-win. Two people trade only because each values what he gets more than what he gives up. That's why in a store both customer and clerk say, "Thank you."
At the international level, trade is also win-win because it allows countries to specialize in what they do well and trade the extra for things they don't make as well. When free trade is unmolested, the world is richer and has more choices.
But I keep hearing about unfair trade. I'm told that trade allows American companies to exploit people in poor countries and makes Americans jobless.
Tom Palmer of the Atlas Economic Research Institute, one of my guests on my Fox Business News show tomorrow night, says those are myths.
Do we exploit people in Third World countries?
"The evidence does not show that," Palmer said. "Multinational companies pay a wage premium. They pay more than local companies pay ... because they want to attract good workers. Look at the Shanghai factory of General Motors. They pay three times what Chinese-owned factories (pay)."
Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that liberalizing trade with Central America would exploit workers.
"People want to work at those factories. They line up. They compete. Are they competing to get exploited? They're competing for higher-wage jobs. I think that those people know their interests better than Nancy Pelosi does."
Sen. Byron Dorgan called free trade "a race to the bottom. This says to American workers if you can't compete against 30-cents-an-hour labor in some other country, you lose your job."
"Again, evidence doesn't support that," said Palmer. "Look at the iPod. It says, 'Manufactured in China.' But if you look in the back, it says, 'Designed in California.' Most of the value is added by American workers." My colleague at Fox News, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said, "In a country we can only be free if we can feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves. When we start outsourcing everything, that's a road to being enslaved."
"I hope that Gov. Huckabee thought about that when he was governor of Arkansas, and made sure there was no jobs outsourced to Virginia
or Texas," Palmer replied. "He should have protected the people of Arkansas, right?"
But that's different. We can count on Pennsylvania in a time of war. I don't know that I can count on China.
"If you're trading with them, it makes war much less likely," Palmer said. "We're not going to go to war with Canada. It's our biggest trading partner -- $600 billion a year going across the U.S.-Canada border in trade along the longest non-militarized border in the world. Five thousand miles, counting Alaska. That is trade creating peace."
As the French economist Frederic Bastiat put it, "When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."
Palmer offered another way to think about trade: as a machine -- "a machine that allows Florida farmers to turn oranges into (phones). They can't grow cell phones on their trees in Florida. They grow oranges really well. What they can do is take those oranges and trade them for cell phones."
And when people do this worldwide, they get richer. "Just like the case of you buying some coffee at the Starbucks. You could have made your own coffee. But your time might have been better spent doing something else. So you outsourced your coffee production. You made yourself better off. And that young lady who sold you the coffee made herself better off."
Palmer points out that China was once the most advanced society in the world. It had developed the clock, printing, the compass and more. Not coincidentally, while it was advancing technology and science, it was a major world trader.
"And it crumbled because they destroyed their trade. They made it illegal to trade with foreigners. And they turned inward. That set in process a stagnation that only now is being undone. We shouldn't do that to our country."
We're different, aren't we? We know how to make everything we need. "There's always opportunities for new progress. ... Remember watching "Star Trek" as a kid and they had that weird communicator? Everybody has one now. ... (T)rade made that possible."
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at www.johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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