April 25, 2010
By Herman Cain
Tax Freedom Day, as defined by the Tax Foundation, has come and gone without much attention from the media this year. It is supposed to be the day we have worked since the beginning of the year to pay our collective tax bill for federal, state and local taxes.
Theoretically, it was on April 9 this year, a little more than a fourth of our sweat equity. Practically, it has not arrived yet.
The Tax Freedom Day (TFD) calculation does not include the deficit for this fiscal year. It does not include the total national debt, nor does it include unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It also does not include the yet-to-be-determined cost of ObamaCare if it stands up in court.
If you are on blood pressure or anxiety medication, then make sure you have taken your daily dosage before reading on.
When you include the latest projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 (October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010), then TFD would be May 17th. That means we would have to work four and a half months (over a third of the year) to pay Uncle Sam to cover just this year’s spending.
If you calculate TFD based on the national debt of $12.5 trillion and counting, then we would have to work 365 days for the government before we started working for ourselves. No, that’s not a mistake. We would have to work all year for the government before working for ourselves.
Unfunded liabilities are between four and five times the national debt, depending on whose counting and which set of assumptions are used. But whether it is four or five times the national debt, it is still a financial disaster in our future.
There is growing agreement by sober analysts who are not intoxicated on financial fantasy that the real cost of ObamaCare is not going to reduce any deficits as the president claims. So the nightmare gets worse.
The thought of working a full year to pay off this year’s deficit or five years to pay for the long-term irresponsibility of government is beyond rational. Sadly, too many people are clueless or don’t care, or they are still dreaming that somebody else is going to pay it off. I know! How about those evil rich business people who generate jobs!
Endless debt generated by government means endless taxes. That means an endless nightmare unless something is done other than looking for endless ways to tax people. These nightmare scenarios have been building for decades and both political parties are responsible for this gross irresponsibility.
But the current administration and Democrat-controlled Congress have accelerated the spending exponentially, and they have intensified their search for more ways to tax us. Sneak-a-taxes are their favorite tactic and many Democrats are still floating the idea of the dreaded and disastrous value-added tax (VAT).
Many people believe that this is just the culture of Washington, D.C. and that it can’t be changed. I do not accept that excuse! It can change with the right political will power and the right leadership courage.
When I first shared these TFD calculations on my radio show, a caller suggested that I should not scare people with these exaggerations. I pointed out to him that the deficits are real, the calculations are accurate, and I do not apologize for telling people the truth. And as I have often said, liberals can’t handle the truth.
Tax Freedom Day is not what it used to be. And as long as elected leaders remain in this perpetual state of spending, the nation will never wake up from this financial nightmare that threatens our security and prosperity.
It’s way past time to wake up.
April 25, 2010
April 18, 2010
So I’m a racist for disagreeing with Obama?
April 18, 2010
By Herman Cain
When someone calls me a derogatory name such as “Uncle Tom” or “sellout” I don’t even flinch, because it puts their ignorance and lack of intelligence on display. But when someone accuses me or others of being a racist because we disagree with President Obama, I get really, really, really angry.
I couldn’t care less that they call me a racist. But I care a whole lot that they try to intimidate me into not disagreeing with President Obama because he is African-American. To suggest we cannot disagree with our elected leaders for whatever reason is to suggest that we are a nation to be governed by tyranny.
My fuse was lit on this subject by a caller to my radio show last week. It was near the end of the show and I almost made it without having to provide some gift-wrapped explanation to a liberal about her illogical and ridiculous accusation. My radio show producer describes this gift-wrapping technique as delivering a part of one’s anatomy to them on a platter.
Her first question was why am I against health care? I am a survivor of Stage IV cancer because God said “not yet”, and because America has the best health care in the world. I pointed out to her that we do not have a health care crisis in America. We have a health care cost crisis. ObamaCare makes the real crisis worse.
Her second intellectually challenged question was why do I associate with those tea party people, who are the same ones that used to hang black people 100 years ago? I resisted the urge to point out that tea party attendees were not alive one hundred years ago and that most of the centenarians were probably at home watching the tea parties on TV.
Here’s what I did say: I associate with tea party people because I share their passionate disagreement with the escalation of big government, legislation and taxation without members of Congress reading the bills, and an arrogant disregard for the voice of the majority of Americans by President Obama and the Democrats. The caller interpreted those disagreements as Obama bashing.
At that point I knew this was not going to be a logical exchange of perspectives.
This was a typical liberal who wanted to use race to defend President Obama’s unworkable health care legislation, and his other failed ideas. Liberals can’t use facts and logic because the facts do not support the passage of ObamaCare, or other failed ideas such as Cash for Clunkers or the manufactured concept of counting “saved jobs”.
People who use race and illogical comparisons to segregation and slavery to defend President Obama are the real racists. They resort to this empty logic when they are desperate to say something to refute the facts even if it does not make sense. It is also an attempt to silence and intimidate people, especially white people. According to their empty logic, that makes me a black racist against black people, in addition to an “Uncle Tom” and a “sellout”.
In the vernacular of my grandfather “I does not care!”
Millions of black Americans and I went to school on the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents to learn how to think for ourselves. We succeeded! All Americans are beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the significant progress this country has made towards equal opportunity. And we are suppose to just shut up because President Obama is dark-skinned? I don’t think so!
Tyranny is the suppression of disagreement, and the control of people’s lives through legislative and regulatory abuse of power. That’s what the “tea party people” are passionately against, and I will continue to echo those views as loudly and often as I can.
Rational American Citizens Interested in Saving This country are not the racists. We are the patriots.
By Herman Cain
When someone calls me a derogatory name such as “Uncle Tom” or “sellout” I don’t even flinch, because it puts their ignorance and lack of intelligence on display. But when someone accuses me or others of being a racist because we disagree with President Obama, I get really, really, really angry.
I couldn’t care less that they call me a racist. But I care a whole lot that they try to intimidate me into not disagreeing with President Obama because he is African-American. To suggest we cannot disagree with our elected leaders for whatever reason is to suggest that we are a nation to be governed by tyranny.
My fuse was lit on this subject by a caller to my radio show last week. It was near the end of the show and I almost made it without having to provide some gift-wrapped explanation to a liberal about her illogical and ridiculous accusation. My radio show producer describes this gift-wrapping technique as delivering a part of one’s anatomy to them on a platter.
Her first question was why am I against health care? I am a survivor of Stage IV cancer because God said “not yet”, and because America has the best health care in the world. I pointed out to her that we do not have a health care crisis in America. We have a health care cost crisis. ObamaCare makes the real crisis worse.
Her second intellectually challenged question was why do I associate with those tea party people, who are the same ones that used to hang black people 100 years ago? I resisted the urge to point out that tea party attendees were not alive one hundred years ago and that most of the centenarians were probably at home watching the tea parties on TV.
Here’s what I did say: I associate with tea party people because I share their passionate disagreement with the escalation of big government, legislation and taxation without members of Congress reading the bills, and an arrogant disregard for the voice of the majority of Americans by President Obama and the Democrats. The caller interpreted those disagreements as Obama bashing.
At that point I knew this was not going to be a logical exchange of perspectives.
This was a typical liberal who wanted to use race to defend President Obama’s unworkable health care legislation, and his other failed ideas. Liberals can’t use facts and logic because the facts do not support the passage of ObamaCare, or other failed ideas such as Cash for Clunkers or the manufactured concept of counting “saved jobs”.
People who use race and illogical comparisons to segregation and slavery to defend President Obama are the real racists. They resort to this empty logic when they are desperate to say something to refute the facts even if it does not make sense. It is also an attempt to silence and intimidate people, especially white people. According to their empty logic, that makes me a black racist against black people, in addition to an “Uncle Tom” and a “sellout”.
In the vernacular of my grandfather “I does not care!”
Millions of black Americans and I went to school on the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents to learn how to think for ourselves. We succeeded! All Americans are beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the significant progress this country has made towards equal opportunity. And we are suppose to just shut up because President Obama is dark-skinned? I don’t think so!
Tyranny is the suppression of disagreement, and the control of people’s lives through legislative and regulatory abuse of power. That’s what the “tea party people” are passionately against, and I will continue to echo those views as loudly and often as I can.
Rational American Citizens Interested in Saving This country are not the racists. We are the patriots.
April 12, 2010
VAT: The cowardly tax
April 12, 2010
By Herman Cain
Now that President Obama and the Democrats have generated a projected record $10 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, they are now singing their favorite song: We must raise taxes!
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sent the first signal a few weeks ago when he said paying taxes is the price we pay for living in this great country. Never mind that we are paying too much and that too much of our money is being wasted.
One of the president's senior economic advisers, Paul Volcker, said recently in a speech that "we must raise taxes" to deal with the deficit. Never mind that the administration and the Democrats made an already bad deficit situation worse, and never mind that they were aware of the situation before they jammed the disastrous health-care bill through Congress for the president's signature.
It is outrageous that they have played the taxpayers for the sucker punch of the century. They ignored the coming deficits of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while passing the massive health-care bill. To make matters worse, Mr. Volcker is suggesting the dreaded value-added-tax, also called a VAT tax.
Please insert the scream of your choice right here if you already know the implications of a new VAT on this country. Otherwise, keep reading.
A VAT is not a single new tax. It is several new sneak-a-taxes. It taxes each phase in the development of a product or service until it is ultimately sold to the end user, and you also pay any applicable retail sales taxes. These intermediate taxes are passed along to the consumer and are reflected as a net increase in the price of the goods or service.
The doubly outrageous aspect of the VAT is that it is on top of all the other state and federal taxes we pay. Paul Volcker and the Democrats like the VAT because it is hidden from the clueless and uninformed voter, who will forget about it soon after it is passed if it is passed.
The VAT is also a cowardly tax increase because these same clueless and uninformed voters will easily blame the greedy retailers for raising the prices of their merchandise. And for the 50 percent of the taxpayers who have figured out how not to pay any taxes at all, this administration and Congress will find a way to give them a VAT exemption.
Just as Obamacare puts this country a giant step closer to becoming the United States of Europe, passage of a VAT would certainly seal the deal as the New Europe, which would be nearly impossible to undo. I said nearly impossible, not completely.
The answer to reducing the deficit and supercharging the economy is to replace the tax code with the single-rate Fair Tax. This solution assumes, however, that there is no continued increase in federal spending. With this administration and Democrat-controlled Congress, stopping the spending is completely impossible.
Obama and the Democrats in Congress would never consider the answer to reducing the debt and stimulating the economy I just proposed, because it does not achieve their goals of a government power grab, expanding the role of government in our lives or creating more social programs for the clueless and the uninformed so they will continue to elect and re-elect liberal Democrats to Congress and the White House.
Never mind what We the People want, but we will remember in November.
By Herman Cain
Now that President Obama and the Democrats have generated a projected record $10 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, they are now singing their favorite song: We must raise taxes!
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sent the first signal a few weeks ago when he said paying taxes is the price we pay for living in this great country. Never mind that we are paying too much and that too much of our money is being wasted.
One of the president's senior economic advisers, Paul Volcker, said recently in a speech that "we must raise taxes" to deal with the deficit. Never mind that the administration and the Democrats made an already bad deficit situation worse, and never mind that they were aware of the situation before they jammed the disastrous health-care bill through Congress for the president's signature.
It is outrageous that they have played the taxpayers for the sucker punch of the century. They ignored the coming deficits of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while passing the massive health-care bill. To make matters worse, Mr. Volcker is suggesting the dreaded value-added-tax, also called a VAT tax.
Please insert the scream of your choice right here if you already know the implications of a new VAT on this country. Otherwise, keep reading.
A VAT is not a single new tax. It is several new sneak-a-taxes. It taxes each phase in the development of a product or service until it is ultimately sold to the end user, and you also pay any applicable retail sales taxes. These intermediate taxes are passed along to the consumer and are reflected as a net increase in the price of the goods or service.
The doubly outrageous aspect of the VAT is that it is on top of all the other state and federal taxes we pay. Paul Volcker and the Democrats like the VAT because it is hidden from the clueless and uninformed voter, who will forget about it soon after it is passed if it is passed.
The VAT is also a cowardly tax increase because these same clueless and uninformed voters will easily blame the greedy retailers for raising the prices of their merchandise. And for the 50 percent of the taxpayers who have figured out how not to pay any taxes at all, this administration and Congress will find a way to give them a VAT exemption.
Just as Obamacare puts this country a giant step closer to becoming the United States of Europe, passage of a VAT would certainly seal the deal as the New Europe, which would be nearly impossible to undo. I said nearly impossible, not completely.
The answer to reducing the deficit and supercharging the economy is to replace the tax code with the single-rate Fair Tax. This solution assumes, however, that there is no continued increase in federal spending. With this administration and Democrat-controlled Congress, stopping the spending is completely impossible.
Obama and the Democrats in Congress would never consider the answer to reducing the debt and stimulating the economy I just proposed, because it does not achieve their goals of a government power grab, expanding the role of government in our lives or creating more social programs for the clueless and the uninformed so they will continue to elect and re-elect liberal Democrats to Congress and the White House.
Never mind what We the People want, but we will remember in November.
April 4, 2010
Defending ObamaCare with, shall we say... misinformation
April 4, 2010
By Herman Cain
The degree to which President Obama is being misinformed or just uninformed on his own is staggering! But misinforming the uninformed appears to be the Democrats’ strategy to defend their Health Care Deform legislation.
In a nationally televised broadcast interview last Friday on CBS’s “The Early Show”, President Obama said “this country was going to go bankrupt” without forcing changes to the health care system. He believes it was “the right thing to do.”
The uninformed in this country believes it was the right thing to do because Obama said so. Some of us are not so gullible because we are aware of the gimmicky accounting and fuzzy assumptions that got them the projection they wanted from the Congressional Budget Office. Some of us are also aware of the 159 new boards and commissions created in the bill. Some of us are aware of the host of sneak-a-taxes in the bill, and the expansion of the powers of the Internal Revenue Service to become the Health Care Police.
Some of us are keenly aware that the ObamaCare legislation will ultimately lead to health care rationing similar to the systems in Canada, England, Germany and other European countries. But the Obama cheerleaders don’t care.
Some of us are also aware that the recently passed health care bill plus the tsunami federal spending, plus the unprecedented buildup of the national debt, plus Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid deficit spending are the real reasons we are heading toward a bankrupt America. There’s a deafening silence from the president and Congress about these issues because it does not advance their political agenda.
The uninformed have chosen to forget that the president said the unemployment rate would remain under 8 percent if his $787 billion so-called stimulus bill passed.
Well, it passed, and unemployment has been above 9 percent ever since.
The uninformed have chosen to forget that the president promised a new spirit of bi-partisanship in Washington, D.C. Although President Obama spent seven hours in front of TV cameras during his so-called health care summit trying to convince the public he was being bi-partisan, both Senate and House versions of the health care legislation and the final bill passed along party line votes, all Democrats!
Transparency was another campaign promise, but who cares? Some people would rather remain blind to the arm-twisting and deal-making that was done to buy enough votes for passage of this historic disaster to our economy, and the hijacking of our liberties and constitutional rights.
In interview after interview, the Democrats and the administration are sticking to their script of lofty advantages and misinformation. Senator Arlen Specter and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, were booed at a standing-room-only town hall meeting in Philadelphia last Saturday, trying to defend ObamaCare. They did not expect some informed people to show up with very clear and specific questions they could not answer.
Senator Specter even tried to tell the crowd that ObamaCare needed to be passed because 47 million people were uninsured. Someone yelled from the audience “that’s a lie”. Even the president has stopped using that misleading number.
Even though many large corporations have announced multi-million-dollar cost impacts of the new health care law of the land (for now!), President Obama says it’s too soon to judge the new health care law. Translation: The less people know about what’s in the new bill, the easier it will be for people to forget over time, and the easier it will be for the American people to get the shaft once again.
Alternate translation: Trust me!
Please do not hurt anyone as we all rush to get in line for ObamaCare. And there will be really, really long lines. It’s called rationing.
By Herman Cain
The degree to which President Obama is being misinformed or just uninformed on his own is staggering! But misinforming the uninformed appears to be the Democrats’ strategy to defend their Health Care Deform legislation.
In a nationally televised broadcast interview last Friday on CBS’s “The Early Show”, President Obama said “this country was going to go bankrupt” without forcing changes to the health care system. He believes it was “the right thing to do.”
The uninformed in this country believes it was the right thing to do because Obama said so. Some of us are not so gullible because we are aware of the gimmicky accounting and fuzzy assumptions that got them the projection they wanted from the Congressional Budget Office. Some of us are also aware of the 159 new boards and commissions created in the bill. Some of us are aware of the host of sneak-a-taxes in the bill, and the expansion of the powers of the Internal Revenue Service to become the Health Care Police.
Some of us are keenly aware that the ObamaCare legislation will ultimately lead to health care rationing similar to the systems in Canada, England, Germany and other European countries. But the Obama cheerleaders don’t care.
Some of us are also aware that the recently passed health care bill plus the tsunami federal spending, plus the unprecedented buildup of the national debt, plus Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid deficit spending are the real reasons we are heading toward a bankrupt America. There’s a deafening silence from the president and Congress about these issues because it does not advance their political agenda.
The uninformed have chosen to forget that the president said the unemployment rate would remain under 8 percent if his $787 billion so-called stimulus bill passed.
Well, it passed, and unemployment has been above 9 percent ever since.
The uninformed have chosen to forget that the president promised a new spirit of bi-partisanship in Washington, D.C. Although President Obama spent seven hours in front of TV cameras during his so-called health care summit trying to convince the public he was being bi-partisan, both Senate and House versions of the health care legislation and the final bill passed along party line votes, all Democrats!
Transparency was another campaign promise, but who cares? Some people would rather remain blind to the arm-twisting and deal-making that was done to buy enough votes for passage of this historic disaster to our economy, and the hijacking of our liberties and constitutional rights.
In interview after interview, the Democrats and the administration are sticking to their script of lofty advantages and misinformation. Senator Arlen Specter and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, were booed at a standing-room-only town hall meeting in Philadelphia last Saturday, trying to defend ObamaCare. They did not expect some informed people to show up with very clear and specific questions they could not answer.
Senator Specter even tried to tell the crowd that ObamaCare needed to be passed because 47 million people were uninsured. Someone yelled from the audience “that’s a lie”. Even the president has stopped using that misleading number.
Even though many large corporations have announced multi-million-dollar cost impacts of the new health care law of the land (for now!), President Obama says it’s too soon to judge the new health care law. Translation: The less people know about what’s in the new bill, the easier it will be for people to forget over time, and the easier it will be for the American people to get the shaft once again.
Alternate translation: Trust me!
Please do not hurt anyone as we all rush to get in line for ObamaCare. And there will be really, really long lines. It’s called rationing.
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