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Chris Edwards has written a nice summary of what percentage of income taxes have been paid by earners of all income groups for the years 1990, 2000 and 2005. His graph looks like this:
His observations can be read here.
The third voting system in 8 years is on its way to Florida voters. The state's election officials are once again ready to toss their election machines to the scrap heap...or recycling centers...because they just can't seem to find a system that works for voters.
The memory of watching Florida election officials at work after the 2000 election still gives me cold chills. The best advice for the powers that be down there would be to borrow the folks from the Madison County Illinois County Clerk's office. Then there's be a well run election.
Congressman Jeff Flake R-Arizona-each week publicizes a federally funded project he considers a terrible waste of taxpayer money. His name for such pork projects is "Egregious Earmarks".
This week's E.E. is $150,000 to "address the obseity problem and promote a healthier lifestyle in Davis, California." Rep. Flake commented:
"“I don’t think this is what taxpayers meant when
they asked us to cut fat from the budget.”
The IRS lost in 5 circuit court of appeals and will now be refunding $15 billion to customers for the past 3 years of long distance telephone service.
Back in 1898, yes, 1898, the government enacted a 3% excise tax on long distance phone calls as a "temporary" luxury tax on Americans who owned phones in order to fund the Spanish American War. Funny thing is no sitting Congress ever got around to eliminating that "temporary" tax when the war ended. Want a reminder of how things looked back in 1898 when there came a tax to fund the Spanish American War, a time when no one was driving cars and one of my ancestors was setting off with an Illinois regiment to fight with the Rough Riders. We've been paying for this war right up until today. as if...
According to TaxProf what happens now is this:
This is why the federal government engenders so much animosity and lack of trust from all of us who pay taxes to keep it running. A Knight Ridder investigation of Pentagon spending found that the Department of Defense has been paying $20 for ice cube trays that should cost only 81 Cents. Knight Ridder chose to look only at only one aspect of military spending, food equipment. Refrigerator/Freezers were sold to the Pentegon for $32,642.50 apiece, an 89% mark up.
All this because the DOD has gone to something called the Prime Vendor program which allows them to deal with middlemen who set their own prices instead of getting competitive bids. Officials of any local branch of government, city councils, townships, counties, would find themselves in the midst of a firestorm of public indignation if they chose to act so fiscally irresponsible. The trouble with the federal government purchasers is unless they are investigated, no one knows what they are paying, they're too big. I thought the days of the $500 toilet seats were past. I guess not.
Andrew Ferguson has a must read article online if you ever intend to make a visit to Washington DC.
IF YOU WANT A VISION of hell, look here: the national mall in Washington, D.C., at noon on a summer's day.
"Nowhere to park, nowhere to sit, nowhere to eat, nowhere to pee. Do I exaggerate? Only a little. One doesn't have to spend too much time on the national mall--the "place of resort" for public walks that Pierre L'Enfant, the capital's designer, dreamed of--before one begins to detect a certain lack of hospitality. One begins to feel like a nuisance, in fact. Worse, one begins to feel that one is supposed to feel like a nuisance. And one--I hate to say it, I really do--would be right."
Is there a remedy for the pain and suffering tourists experience while visiting the nation's capital? One item that really needs change is the barriers set up to make everyone feel like a vandal in waiting.
The most immediate problem is ham-handed security, overdone, unaccountable, unexplained, and, to the non-specialist, apparently irrational--measures undertaken, it seems, more for the convenience of the mall's caretakers than its visitors (and owners)
Let's be honest. Everyday employees and residents of DC do not like you, Mr. and Mrs. tourist. You or your kids. Or your 8th grade class trippers.
Why eminent domain will be the next big thing in local politics. Local=municipal, county, township.
Property taxes-----public hates them. Because? They get them in the mail, they have to actually write a check for them unlike federal and state income taxes which are usually withheld from pay so they aren't as noticeable.
Local public officials----elected by the public. So? They have to find a way to keep their services without raising taxes. The public likes their roads pothole free and their schools good.
Developers---wooed by public officials. Why? 2 reasons mainly. 1. New business means additional sales and property taxes with which to pay for services. 2. It is good for the resume, the public likes to shop, and a bit of campaign help in order to be re-elected.
TIF incentives---developers' feed bag. Huh? TIF incentives negate the addtional sales and property taxes because developers will end up with a 20 or so year deal in which they do not have to pay the increase in valuation on their property. They pay only what taxes were in effect at the time they purchased the ground. Plus a break on what sales tax is returned to the local government.
Public officials---stuck. How come? They have to justify not having developers pay their fair share of taxes while the public waits to see if their property taxes will go down as promised when the economic development plans were presented.
Supreme Court---developers---local officials---public---Who loses? The public. Now the developers have a new weapon thanks to the latest Supreme Court ruling allowing eminent domain of private property for economic purposes. Who wins? Not the public.
House and Senate Budget Committee chairmen are in the crunch period
negotiating with authorizing committee chairmen over plans to force
spending cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicaid and farm subsidies.
Decisions on how much savings to seek must be made before next week's
planned markups of a fiscal 2006 budget resolution. President Bush called
for a net of $38 billion in savings from entitlement programs, but making
those cuts will be politically difficult and in some cases impossible.
From Midday update, but what isn't mentioned is that entitlement cuts will likely be coming from more than medicaid and farm subsidies. Watch to see this action forced on many other programs, like...well, I can guess...but I'll leave it for now.
From today's Congressional Quarterly midday update: (you can subscribe free to receive this update, otherwise the CQ is a pay to read web site.)
Wouldn't anyone want to avoid that traffic? Records show that Sen. Edward
M. Kennedy, D-Mass., took a taxpayer-funded $2,490 helicopter ride home to
Hyannisport on a Friday evening last May after attending events in New
Bedford, the Boston Herald reported today. The 48-mile flight cost U.S.
taxpayers $51.87 per mile, the paper said. The money came from Kennedy's
Senate accounts. "Driving -- or for that matter commercial air travel --
at that time of day would have taken several hours," said Stephanie
Cutter, a senior Kennedy adviser. Kennedy's decision to tap his Senate
office budget for such a short flight raised eyebrows among his
colleagues. "It's pretty much unheard of to do something like that,"one
Bay State congressman told the paper. "Someone was asleep at the switch
over there." All Massachusetts congressmen are Democrats.
A story that got past most everyone. Where's the mainstream media when it counts? Seems the United States government had a $1billion surplus this past fiscal year which has created a smaller deficit. How can news like this not be all over the place? Or is talk of budget matters only interesting as an election campaign tool?
