The rest of this cartoon can be seen at the American Spectator blog.
Michelle Malkin: Rebel Yell - Taxpayers Revolt Against Gimme-Mania.
The new Boston Tea Party is here, baby, and it’s doused in barbecue sauce.
The first revolt took place on President’s Day in Smurf-blue Seattle, where mom-blogger Keli Carender hastily organized a downtown demonstration to oppose what they called the “stimulus rip-off.” A motley band of nearly 100 protesters — moms and their kids, college students, libertarians, taxpayer groups, GOP activists — raised their voices and dined on pulled pork (donated by yours truly). They assailed both the substance of the overstuffed stimulus package and the short-circuited, non-transparent process by which it was passed.
Some wore pig noses. Others waved Old Glory and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. Their handmade signs read: “Say No to Generational Theft;” “Obama’$ Porkulu$ Wear$ Lip$tick;” and “I don’t want to pay for the SwindleUs! I’m only 10 years old!” The event was peaceful, save for an unhinged city-dweller who showed his tolerance by barging onto the speakers’ stage and giving a Nazi salute.
Carender, a newcomer to political activism, shared advice for other first-timers: “Basically everyone, you just have to do it. Call up your police station or parks department and ask how you can obtain a permit, and then just start advertising. The word will spread. I am only one person, but with a little hard work this protest has become the efforts of a lot of people.”
Why bother? It’s for posterity’s sake. For the historical record. And, hopefully, it will spur others to move from the phones and computers to the streets. For Carender, it’s just the beginning. She gathered all the attendees’ e-mail addresses and will keep up the pressure…
Plans are underway for anti-stimulus-palooza protests in Overland Park, Kansas, Nashville, and New York — home of smug Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer. Schumer’s derisive comment on the Senate floor about the “chattering classes” who oppose reckless spending has not been forgotten or forgiven. The insult spurred central Kentucky talk show host Leland Conway to organize a pork rind drive. Angry taxpayers bombarded the senator’s office with 1,500 bags of cracklins.
Disgraced Democrat Sen. John Edwards was right about one thing: There are two Americas. One America is full of moochers, big and small, corporate and individual, trampling over themselves with their hands out demanding endless bailouts. The other America is full of disgusted, hard-working citizens getting sick of getting played for chumps and punished for practicing personal responsibility.
Now is the time for all good taxpayers to turn the tables on free-lunching countrymen and their enablers in Washington. Community organizing helped propel Barack Obama to the White House. It can work for fiscal conservatism, too.
Investor’s Business Daily: Anti-Stimulus Protests Sprout Up.
Your Tea Party dance card here.
“The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man…” –Tennessee congressman Davey Crockett, 1828
JB Williams, Canada Free Press: When Those Who Don’t Pay Taxes Run the Nation.
According to the IRS, as of the 2006 federal tax reports, 97.01% of all federal taxes collected are paid by the top 50% of income earners in the nation. The bottom 50% of income earners pay only 2.99% of the federal tax haul, most paying nothing at all or getting “tax refunds” for taxes they never paid to begin with.
The break point is only $32,000 annual income. Below this income you are considered too poor to pay taxes, and above this income, you are one of “the rich” who is expected to pick up the tab for the half of the country that do not pay taxes.
Half of the nation (the greedy), pay for the other half of the nation, (the cheated.)
This item alone is what divides America today and it is the only significant difference between the political right which represents the taxpayers, and the political left which panders only to those who have come to believe that they are entitled to the earnings and private property of others.
Until 2006, the majority of voters were taxpayers. As of 2006, and for the foreseeable future, the majority of voters are thieves in search of access to other people’s money and property…
46% of Americans voted against the new “progressive” rush into unbridled secular socialism in the 2008 election. Had Republicans not governed like Democrats since 2004, and had they put forth a serious presidential candidate in 2008, this number would have been much larger.
Still, even with the weakest candidate since Bob Dole in 1996, nearly half of the nation voted against the leftist government now in charge. That’s hardly a “mandate” for drastic “change.”
But more importantly, this 46% represent the “taxpayers” of America, the folks who pick up the tab for all the nonsense and waste that is our federal government today.
They are now outnumbered by the people in search of access to their earnings and assets, all of whom showed up at the polls in record numbers to give Marxists the power to take property from “the greedy” and redistribute those assets to “the cheated.”
Those seeking “free-stuff” from the earnings of others, now rule over those who pay 97.01% of the federal tab already.
SayAnythingBlog: A closer look at Obama’s stimulus “tax cuts.”
The rest of this cartoon can be seen at the American Spectator blog.
Thomas Sowell: Talking Right.
One of the huge and perennial handicaps of the Republicans is that they seldom have anybody who can articulate their case to the public. It is hard to win the White House with candidates like Bob Dole and John McCain.
That was why Governor Sarah Palin was such a sensation in arousing the grassroots Republicans. She could talk!
Try to name five articulate Republicans. Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln come to mind. After that, you have to rack your brain…
Michael Steele not only knows how to talk, he seems to understand the need to talk. In his appearances on television over the years, he has been assertive rather than apologetic. When attacked, he has counter-attacked, not whined defensively, like too many other Republicans.
When criticizing the current administration, Steele won’t have to pull his punches when going after Barack Obama, for fear of being called a racist.
Beyond that, one can only hope that Michael Steele understands what has been so disastrously wrong with the inept way Republicans have gone after the black vote for the past 30 years, by trying to be imitation Democrats.
There are numerous issues on which Democrats have pushed policies that are very harmful to blacks, especially supporting the teachers’ unions instead of parental choice. But, however good the case, somebody has to make it. Somebody has to talk.
He’ll have to talk loudly if he’s going to be heard over the ObamaMedia.
Newsbusters: NBC Thrills Over “Brand Obama.”
Politico: Reporter Arrested for Jumping Rope Line, Wanted Obama’s Autograph.
James Lewis: Anthropogenic Global Warming: The Greatest Fraud in History?
Like famished swine shoving each other aside to get to the trough, self-proclaimed scientists and real politicians are again launching headline upon headline to claim yet another disaster in the name of utterly unproven global warming. Did you know that the flock of geese that flew into US Airways jet engines this month in New York City were put there by global warming? And that London fogs, or rather their absence, are making global warming worse?
Yep. It’s right there in the paper, Maud.
As scientific skeptics are finally discovering the courage to speak out, the hype machine is faltering just a little.
But President Obama just appointed a True Believer to be science czar in the White House. So we can expect the politicians to keep hammering on this little piggy bank until the last golden coin drops out. You’ll be paying for the biggest false alarm in history for years to come.
But what worries me most is that the credibility of science may never recover — and perhaps it shouldn’t. Credibility has to be earned, and once it’s squandered may never be recovered. By now far too many scientists have knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a truly planetary scale.
Why should scientists who’ve gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be trusted again? They shouldn’t. Would you entrust your life savings to Bernie Madoff? Right.
I’m not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely judge what others do in their fields. And yet it’s been flamingly obvious for years now that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy science. That’s why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.
If that’s true, anybody who cares about science should be outraged. Even if you don’t care about that ask yourself if you want your next medical exam to be honest. Or the next time you drive across a traffic bridge, do you want the engineering tests to be falsified? If scientific corruption becomes endemic, we risk losing one of the great jewels of our culture.
Weather Channel founder John Coleman: The Story Behind the Global Warming Scam.
Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
The Australian: Facts Debunk Global Warming Alarmism.
Björn Lomborg: Warming Warnings Get Overheated.
This cartoon was originally posted on June 29, 2007.
The rest of this cartoon can be seen at American Spectator.
“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.” –Sen. Tom Daschle, May 7, 1998.
Los Angeles Times: Daschle Failed to Pay $128,000 in Taxes.
Former Sen. Tom Daschle, tapped by President Obama to lead his healthcare reform campaign, failed to pay more than $128,000 in taxes in the three years before Obama nominated him in December to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
The disclosure — involving unreported income and the use of a car and driver provided to Daschle — comes 2 1/2 weeks after Obama’s choice to head the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, admitted that he had not paid about $43,000 in taxes.
Geithner was ultimately confirmed by the Senate, but the revelations about Daschle’s taxes cast a shadow over the man that many hoped would be able to build political consensus behind an ambitious effort to reshape the nation’s healthcare system.
Daschle did not comment publicly Friday on his tax problems, which are being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee ahead of his confirmation hearing before the panel.
But a spokeswoman for the former Senate majority leader and close Obama ally stressed Friday evening that the tax errors were the result of simple mistakes that Daschle had worked in good faith to correct.
The Wall Street Journal: Geithner’s Tax Code.
According to Mr. Geithner, he initially failed to pay payroll taxes on income he received from the International Monetary Fund in 2001, and then repeated the error in the three subsequent years, despite the help of an accountant. Apologizing to the committee, he took responsibility for what he called “careless” and “avoidable” mistakes while insisting they were unintentional. He acknowledged signing an IMF statement at the time that he understood he had been reimbursed to pay those self-employment taxes, adding that he should have read the statement more carefully. Millions of Americans have said the same thing about the tax code during an IRS audit, earning less forgiveness.
