Obama Likes Chavez’s Policies So Much, He Wants To Duplicate Them

Yeah, yeah, I know all you liberals out there hate to have to admit that Barack Obama’s policies mirror many of those by other leftists currently and throughout history but you’ll have to get over that phobia. Here is a nice summary of how Obama’s “windfall profits tax” mirrors that of his fellow traveler Hugo Chavez:

To compete with Hillary Clinton’s pandering on a gas tax holiday, Barack Obama proposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies of his own last moth. The Obama plan is not unlike the windfall oil profits tax passed by Hugo Chavez just two weeks earlier. Obama would slap a 20% tax on the cost of a barrel of oil above $80 for all domestic oil companies. Chavez tax hits only foreign oil companies and charges a 50% rate for the cost of a barrel of oil above $70. The difference between Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama is only a slight matter of degree.

But no … he’s no socialist right?

To Save Or Spend You Economic Stimulus

Assuming that you are one of the lucky Americans that didn’t make too much money and will be allowed by the benevolent federal government to receive and economic stimulus check, what should you do with it? Our keepers in Washington want you to spend it to “stimulate” the economy with a spending jolt. But the smarter thing to do is either save it or pay down existing debt.

If you save the money it will help increase your chances of being independent of the federal government when you want to retire. True, $600 or $1,200 dollars may not seem like a lot, but when you consider compounding interest that small amount of money equals a couple more thousand dollars when you want to retire. Add just $100 to it each month and 30 years down the road you can have nearly $100,000.

If you pay down your existing debts you put money back in you pocket every month; money that would normally go your creditors. That extra money each month can then be spent and provide a long term economic stimulus. Sure it won’t be as much as your check each month but it will add up over time.

The economy is doing remarkably well and continues to hang on despite the best attempts of our government to throw it into a recession. I’m using my check to pay off a few remaining debts personally and saying to heck with the goobers in Washington. I don’t like getting marching orders and being told what to do all that much so I’m going to do something other than what they planned on me doing with my money which they have graciously decided to give back.

News Flash: Gas Prices To Rise This Summer

I know, it’s obvious – but enough people each year seem to be taken by surprise at how gas prices go up in the summer months like clockwork.

Reasons for this include:
People tend to travel more during the summer.
All sorts of custom gas blends for different regions and lower total supply available in each region to handle shortfalls.
Continuing increase in demand for oil and oil based products around the world (remember petroleum based products are in something like two thirds of all things we buy).
Continued regulation that prevents more drilling and increase in supply of oil.
Environmentalists who work hard to block new refineries and prevent the increase in supply of gasoline and keep supply artificially low.

So please, when prices go up once again this summer remember why.

Senatorette Clinton Wants Your Money

Senatorette Hillary Clinton believes that your money is her money to use as she sees fit to pander for votes. Now she has been exposed as once again the raging liberal, spendaholic she really is:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009, almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator this year.

The Democratic presidential candidate’s staggering request comes at a time when Congress remains engaged in a heated debate over spending federal dollars on parochial projects.

If you think that’s bad, just wait until she starts throwing money around to pay for health insurance!

Memo To New York: Taxes Aren’t The Answer

Amazon.com is showing some balls and fighting back against New York State’s attempt to impede interstate commerce by requiring the company to collect the State’s oppressive sales tax from citizens who use the service.

Amazon.com is fighting back with a lawsuit trying to strike down New York state’s new law forcing the online retailer to collect sales taxes on the state’s behalf.

The dispute, which is before a state court in Manhattan, is heading toward a constitutional showdown that will center on whether New York State is hindering interstate commerce by imposing on out-of-state companies, such as Amazon.com, the burden of serving as a tax collector for New York.

The so-called Amazon tax has been a touchy political issue as Albany has looked for novel ways to fund the state government’s soaring spending amid a predicted drop-off in state tax revenue as the economy slows. The state’s tax department first set its sights on Amazon.com last year when it quietly changed its policy to require some online retailers to begin collecting state and city sales taxes — a combined 8.375% on purchases in New York City — on all orders from residents of New York State.

Hours after The New York Sun reported the initiative, Governor Spitzer pulled the plug on it — temporarily. Last month, the Legislature and Governor Paterson approved a law that requires Amazon.com to start collecting and remitting sales taxes to New York. No other state is requiring the same of online retailers that don’t have a physical presence in the state.
Shopping online is not supposed to be tax-free. New Yorkers are expected, by law, to pencil in the equivalent of a sales tax for out-of-state and online purchases. Many aren’t aware of this requirement, and others choose not to do so. Last year, the state estimated that forcing online retailers to collect the tax would bring in about $100 million more each year between both state and local tax revenue.

New York State is under the impression that the answer to their budget shortfall is that people are not paying enough in taxes. They don’t consider that it is actually due o the fact that they are spending too much doing things beyond the bounds of good government. Perish the thought. They’re mostly a bunch of liberals after all and to liberals the state is the answer.

New York is famous for harassing its citizens who shop out of state to avoid high taxes. There have been reports in the past about attempting to record residents at out of state malls to try and coax them to pay taxes at the rate the State of New York decides they should be paid.

But what it comes down to, in the end, is that New York doesn’t want to admit that their taxes are hurting the working folks liberals claim to love and cherish and the state doesn’t want them to be able to exhibit their liberty and find the best price they can. Because that usually means shopping out of state and not paying the state sales tax.

Capital Gains Tax Increase Not Popular

Poll after poll show that specific proposals by the Democrats are very unpopular … but people still think they are the better choice when given a “generic” option of R’s versus D’s. Which makes you wonder what people are smoking and if they are just being pig headed and don’t want to admit that the Democrats do not see things the way they do and justify supporting them.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 65% of Likely Voters oppose an increase in the Capital Gains tax. Just 16% favor an increase, while a fifth of voters are not sure (see Scott Rasmussen’s video report).

Eighty-five percent of Republicans oppose an increase in the capital gains tax along with 50% of Democrats and 62% of those not affiliated with either major party.

Fifty-two percent (52%) believe hiking the capital gains tax would hurt the economy. Just 17% say it would help the economy while 18% say it would have no impact. Republicans overwhelmingly believe raising this tax would harm the economy along with a plurality of Democrats.

Most voters, 56%, own at least $5,000 worth of stocks, bonds, or mutual funds and would be directly impacted by an increase in the capital gains tax. Not surprisingly, 71% of these investors are opposed to a capital gains tax increase.

Democrats like Barack Obama have suggested increasing this tax. But I doubt you’ll see only 35% of Americans vote for him. More tomorrow about how people don’t agree with Democrats but keep voting fore them so stay tuned …

Californians Reaping What They Have Sown

Liberals in California who over extended themselves hoping that the government would bail them out are in trouble. But those on the left coast have always had little concern for the future and often believe in living in thw now. And now lots of them are going to lose their homes.

The number of California homes lost to foreclosure in the first quarter surged 327% from year-ago levels — reaching an average of more than 500 foreclosures per day — DataQuick said in a report warning that the widening foreclosure problem could “spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans.”

From DataQuick’s report on California foreclosures in the first three months of 2008: “Trustees Deeds recorded, or the actual loss of a home to foreclosure, totaled 47,171 during the first quarter. … Last quarter’s total rose 48.9 percent from 31,676 in the previous quarter, and jumped 327.6 percent from 11,032 in first quarter 2007.” That translates into 517 foreclosures every day in the first quarter of 2008.

It’s really hard to feel sorry for Californians who, as a whole, have set up themselves and their state for such failures. There is no free lunch and many Californians are now learning that hard truth. In the future we can only hope they learn their lesson that only the government can go into debt and never have to worry about the collection agent coming to ask for their money.

McCain Panders With Temporary Gas Tax Relief

Yes, that is pandering you smell. Which, oddly enough, smells like fecal matter.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax and several tax cuts as the likely presidential nominee sought to stem the public’s pain from a troubled economy.

Timed for the day millions of Americans filed their tax returns, McCain offered some immediate steps as well as long-term proposals in a broad economic speech. The nation’s financial woes have replaced the Iraq war as the top concern for voters, and McCain, who has said economics is not his strongest suit, felt compelled to address the problems as he looks ahead to the November general election.

“In so many ways, we need to make a clean break from the worst excesses of both political parties,” McCain told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University. “Somewhere along the way, too many Republicans in Congress became indistinguishable from the big-spending Democrats they used to oppose.”

John McCain’s proposal certainly would be of some benefit to an ailing economy … at least until the tax was reinstated. But the bigger issue is that such a proposal has a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the House and Senate because the liberals don’t want to let go of any of our money which they are currently taking.

John McCain should be talking about trimming spending and scaling back welfare programs (like Social Security and Medicare) and then we could cut taxes permanently. What McCain’s goal here is is to be able to say in debates and on the stump that he proposed a tax cut. That’s it.

Sure I’d love to see the gasoline tax repealed temporarily. It being repealed permanently would be even better. But I don’t trust John “Screw the First Amendment” McCain to get it done.

Senator McCain Off the Mark As Usual

Senator John McCain continues to demonstrate why he is not a very good candidate for the Presidency by blaming the imagined recession he claims America is supposedly in on “greed” on Wall Street.

Sen. John McCain this morning said “greedy” Wall Street investors are partly to blame for what he said is probably an economic recession the nation is now suffering.

“There has to be a modification of the greedy behavior of some of these people,” he said, using the word “greedy” repeatedly in remarks to the Associated Press annual meeting at the Washington Convention Center today.

Of course the first problem with McCain’s statements is that while growth of the American economy has slowed, it has not yet entered a recession. But you can’t expect a career politician to be smart enough to know that I suppose.

The second problem is that the REAL problem with the economy right now is the government itself which, under President Bill Clinton, sowed the seeds for the housing crash by implementing policies where lenders were coerced into making bad loans for bad investments to people that were bad risks.

If John McCain cannot even get his brain around these facts and that it is less government and not more government that is the solution to this current economic downturn, he is no better than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Senator McCain is right on one thing however. It is “greed” that is the problem. But it is the “greed” of politicians for more power and not the “greed” of Wall Street. The problems is the “greed” of people who took out loans for a bigger home than they knew they could note afford, or at the very least should have known they could not afford if they would have used math that a sixth grader should know. It is the “greed” of people who tried to invest in real estate without a plan for how to pay their bill. It is the “greed” of these same people that now want the taxpayers to bail them out of their bad investment.

And no, I’m still not voting for you in November. Just wanted to remind you of that Mr. McCain.

Always Shop Around Or Don’t Complain

I thought this might be a good time to remind people that being a thrifty consumer means spending a little bit of time to check prices you are given for services especially considering how it seems lots of people always are complaining how they feel “ripped off” or that they are “paying too much” for goods and services. I know a lot of people these days that don’t check to see if they can get the same thing cheaper somewhere else. For example, five minutes can save you $50.

The local dealership wanted over $250 to do the preliminary 600 mile maintenance on my motorcycle but the dealership near where I work does the same service for $200.

So when was the last time you actually double-checked a price you were given? And if it has been a while do you like throwing money down the drain?

Capitalism, much reviled by it is by those that always feel someone is taking advantage of them, works best when everyone takes a few minutes to make sure that they are indeed getting the best deal. That’s keeps the suppliers of goods and services honest.