Finally an everyday American who epitomizes blue collar America has brought Obama's secret welfare program to the forefront. I can just hear the Main Street media whispering to each other, "Oh no!". He asked, for those of you who are in outer space, why he should be taxed so much if he buys a plumbing business for $250,000? Obama's answer was that he needs to spread the wealth around. It comes down to that. Plain and simple.
For those of you who want to evaluate the situation, consider this. I do construction now and then. It is a suplimentary source of income. Last year I signed a deal to build a familyroom addition to a house, an attached 3 car garage, a new large recycled plastic deck, and new windows in the house. The contract was for $260,000. The job took 3 months. I hired the framing carpenters, the plumbers, the concrete subcontractor, the painters, the electrician and the finish men. I did a lot of the work, but as a "paper contractor" I have no employees of my own. My profit was a small fraction of the contract because I had to pay all those people. Under Obama's "If you make over $250,000 per year", I get whacked.
If you say, well he probably meant those who net over $250,000 per year, Obama never said that and he has had the chance for days now to do that. Besides, most small corporations are managed so that the owner takes a salary out, and it is never over $250,000 per year.
So how does Obama hope to do his plan? He is proposing to hit those who gross that much. The ramifications of this are obvious. Nobody will be doing these jobs anymore. If they do more then one job a year, they will be setting up new corporations for each job, LLCs. On those jobs that are like the one I had last year, There will be a lot of $249,000 contracts with work change orders or direct payments to plumbers and electricians by the homeowners. So it will work like this: Contract $250,000, but the homeowner has to pay the plumbers and lumber company and the electricians separately out of that amount, thereby resulting in less then half of the contract being deposited into the corporate account.
The sad fact is that Obama is proposing to do this. He is disguising this by saying it in such a way that you would think he is referring to only the rich businesses. He isn't. His plan will result in obvious skirting of the rules and generating much less then he thinks. Not to mention the fact that when the economy is in the tank, being cute and trying to stick it to blue collar America will be a coffin nail.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Did you know?
Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare."
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Obama on taxes
Obama claims he won't raise taxes on most Americans. Maybe I'm missing something. The Washington Post Fact Checker says in part:
The claim that Obama will "enact" the largest tax increase since World War II is also overblown. The Bush tax cuts will expire automatically at the end of 2010, so it is hardly a question of "enacting" a new tax increase. According to Obama's new economics adviser, Jason Furman, the revenues raised from letting the tax cuts expire will be returned to middle and low-income tax payers in the form of tax credits to pay for health insurance, so the overall effect will be revenue neutral.
Well when the tax cuts expire, everyone's taxes go up. But if they get a tax credit, Obama says it will be revenue neutral. The last time I looked, a tax credit filed this year on last years income works if your income is steady year to year. What about those who were employed and now are out of a job? What about someone who gets married this year but was single last year? What about a couple who one partner dies or gets divorced? There are many cases where their situations will mean a tax increase.
Obama wants to hit the oil companies with huge profits taxes. Sounds great but how do you think they will act after that happens? they will raise the price of gas at the gas stations. Same as a gas tax, it's just passed on to you.
Obama wants to remove the $100,000 cap on Social Security tax payments. He wants to have people above $200,000 pay into SS where now income over $100,000 is exempt. This amounts to a big tax increase for those at $200,000 and up. He has claimed that under $250,000 would see no increase. Looks like a little lie here.
Obama's capital gains tax increase will affect a huge chuck of people under $250,000. Every city worker, retired cop, retired fire department employee and many others who need to cash in their deferred compensation plans to make ends meet will be hit with this tax. No exclusion for being under $250,000.
The bottom line is Obama has been slinging the crap and a lot of folks are buying it. Read between the lines, there is no free lunch!
The claim that Obama will "enact" the largest tax increase since World War II is also overblown. The Bush tax cuts will expire automatically at the end of 2010, so it is hardly a question of "enacting" a new tax increase. According to Obama's new economics adviser, Jason Furman, the revenues raised from letting the tax cuts expire will be returned to middle and low-income tax payers in the form of tax credits to pay for health insurance, so the overall effect will be revenue neutral.
Well when the tax cuts expire, everyone's taxes go up. But if they get a tax credit, Obama says it will be revenue neutral. The last time I looked, a tax credit filed this year on last years income works if your income is steady year to year. What about those who were employed and now are out of a job? What about someone who gets married this year but was single last year? What about a couple who one partner dies or gets divorced? There are many cases where their situations will mean a tax increase.
Obama wants to hit the oil companies with huge profits taxes. Sounds great but how do you think they will act after that happens? they will raise the price of gas at the gas stations. Same as a gas tax, it's just passed on to you.
Obama wants to remove the $100,000 cap on Social Security tax payments. He wants to have people above $200,000 pay into SS where now income over $100,000 is exempt. This amounts to a big tax increase for those at $200,000 and up. He has claimed that under $250,000 would see no increase. Looks like a little lie here.
Obama's capital gains tax increase will affect a huge chuck of people under $250,000. Every city worker, retired cop, retired fire department employee and many others who need to cash in their deferred compensation plans to make ends meet will be hit with this tax. No exclusion for being under $250,000.
The bottom line is Obama has been slinging the crap and a lot of folks are buying it. Read between the lines, there is no free lunch!
Obama and Defense spending
Last February Obama promised to cut all aspects of defense spending:
http://www.punditchick.com/2008/02/27/obama-plans-to-cut-defense/
Now he says he will increase all aspects of defense spending:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/defense/
Its interesting that the link to Obama being against defense spending has a u-tube clip with it, but it has been taken down by someone??
http://www.punditchick.com/2008/02/27/obama-plans-to-cut-defense/
Now he says he will increase all aspects of defense spending:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/defense/
Its interesting that the link to Obama being against defense spending has a u-tube clip with it, but it has been taken down by someone??
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Real One
This country is nearing the point where they have to make a choice for President. Those who want Obama should consider what he will not tell you. He will not tell you what he did with Acorn, he will not tell you when he met Mr. Ayers (he has lied about this by saying he only knew him in passing), he won't tell you what is in his medical records, he won't release his birth certificate, he won't tell you how he could have been in a church for 20 years and never even heard about a blockbuster attack on America by his paster, He won't tell you that he knew he was working with a real estate crook Mr Rezco and he profited in a scandalous way.
We know he has has some questionable friends and acquaintances, We know he lies about these things. We know his wife has a chip on her shoulder and a persecution complex against whites. Her ex-boss in a law firm she was a first year lawyer, tells a story about her that supports this. We know her senior thesis was about how whites in her college see her as black in a negative way. We know his campaign has put a gag on her for a month now for obvious reasons. We know his math does not add up and all he promises can't be paid for at all. We know when he ran for state senate he promised lower taxes and he raised them instead. We know he sounds white when his audience is white and sounds like a brother when he is in front of a neighborhood crowd. Can you trust him? He says he thinks military action is justified when their is genocide but not in the case of the Kurds which he himself referred to as a genocide a few years ago. This means military action in Africa! Remember, one of the two bills of his that became public law in the senate was to support monetary action in the Republic of the Congo. We know he is in favor of abortion without restriction, and we know he voted against help for miracle babies (those that survive abortions), and we know that he worked hard to outlaw handguns but told an NRA crowd he was in favor of gun ownership. He lies continually to get by. The only way he can get his agenda funded is by doing what other democrats have tried; to gut the military. Funny, a month ago he even said he would expand the military when his audience was the American Legion. Americans need to think hard before making a decision, there is too much at stake.
We know he has has some questionable friends and acquaintances, We know he lies about these things. We know his wife has a chip on her shoulder and a persecution complex against whites. Her ex-boss in a law firm she was a first year lawyer, tells a story about her that supports this. We know her senior thesis was about how whites in her college see her as black in a negative way. We know his campaign has put a gag on her for a month now for obvious reasons. We know his math does not add up and all he promises can't be paid for at all. We know when he ran for state senate he promised lower taxes and he raised them instead. We know he sounds white when his audience is white and sounds like a brother when he is in front of a neighborhood crowd. Can you trust him? He says he thinks military action is justified when their is genocide but not in the case of the Kurds which he himself referred to as a genocide a few years ago. This means military action in Africa! Remember, one of the two bills of his that became public law in the senate was to support monetary action in the Republic of the Congo. We know he is in favor of abortion without restriction, and we know he voted against help for miracle babies (those that survive abortions), and we know that he worked hard to outlaw handguns but told an NRA crowd he was in favor of gun ownership. He lies continually to get by. The only way he can get his agenda funded is by doing what other democrats have tried; to gut the military. Funny, a month ago he even said he would expand the military when his audience was the American Legion. Americans need to think hard before making a decision, there is too much at stake.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Oh how history clarifies things
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
as a NY Times subscriber?In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Media spin on financial mess
Today on 60 Minutes they discussed the unregulated practice of selling default swaps. These insurance policies were sold to buyers of batches of junk mortgages as an inducement so the paper could be sold easily. The CBS program rightfully explained the practice where these "swaps" could be sold without regulation because if they were called insurance, they would be regulated by requiring money reserves to cover the insurance policies. You see, it was Bear Stearns, AIG, and all the rest of the big groups now in trouble that did this. I suppose that if I have a bag full of dog crap and I want to sell it, if I also offer insurance that it has value, it helps. Well, 60 Minutes is trying to say these groups got in trouble because of this. That there were trillions of dollars in losses in these default swaps. There were.
The truth of the matter is that Fannie and Freddie manipulated the ratings of these junk sub-prime mortgages which caused these Wall St. finance companies to try to insure these pieces of toilet paper so they could sell them. As I said before if a bag of dog crap is insured and the insurance company can't pay, what was the problem? Obviously the bag of crap was in the first place.
The media can rally around their Democrat cronies in all kind of ways, but the problem is that Freddie and Fannie scammed the system and the overseers in Congress knew it and let it go on because these two groups were giving money to their campaigns and funding affordable housing projects. You see the Democrats thing the ends justify the means no matter what.
Now we have been fleeced for 700 Billion dollars. We will never see half of that despite what they are telling us. Obama stepped into this mess with both feet. He helped Acorn forcefully push these no money down plans to financial institutes. The mortgage companies were pushed to do it or face the unspoken consequences. They all did it. No different then how Jesse Jackson got a Coca-Cola bottling distributorship for his sons. Intimidation! Obama trained the Acorn directors on how to do it and acted as General Council (head lawyer) to protect them. Oh by the way, did I say that Obama was third in most money received from Freddie and Fannie and he voted against the Republican effort to increase oversight on Freddie and Fannie in 2005?
Obama is dangerous and his anti-establishment efforts over the years should be proof. America needs to wake up. If you need to show the world that you are not against blacks, do it another way. Electing this man is the wrong way.
The truth of the matter is that Fannie and Freddie manipulated the ratings of these junk sub-prime mortgages which caused these Wall St. finance companies to try to insure these pieces of toilet paper so they could sell them. As I said before if a bag of dog crap is insured and the insurance company can't pay, what was the problem? Obviously the bag of crap was in the first place.
The media can rally around their Democrat cronies in all kind of ways, but the problem is that Freddie and Fannie scammed the system and the overseers in Congress knew it and let it go on because these two groups were giving money to their campaigns and funding affordable housing projects. You see the Democrats thing the ends justify the means no matter what.
Now we have been fleeced for 700 Billion dollars. We will never see half of that despite what they are telling us. Obama stepped into this mess with both feet. He helped Acorn forcefully push these no money down plans to financial institutes. The mortgage companies were pushed to do it or face the unspoken consequences. They all did it. No different then how Jesse Jackson got a Coca-Cola bottling distributorship for his sons. Intimidation! Obama trained the Acorn directors on how to do it and acted as General Council (head lawyer) to protect them. Oh by the way, did I say that Obama was third in most money received from Freddie and Fannie and he voted against the Republican effort to increase oversight on Freddie and Fannie in 2005?
Obama is dangerous and his anti-establishment efforts over the years should be proof. America needs to wake up. If you need to show the world that you are not against blacks, do it another way. Electing this man is the wrong way.
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