Tag: TAXPAYERS

WATCH: This Likely 2020 Dem Presidential Candidate Ups The Ante: Speaks Of 90% Tax Rate

By HANK BERRIEN

Apparently unsatisfied with the suggestion of fellow Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that wealthy Americans should be forced into a 60-70% tax rate, likely 2020 presidential candidate Julian Castro, who served as the Obama Administration’s Housing and Urban Development secretary, seemed to speculate on Sunday about the possibility of raising Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to 90%.

Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week,” Castro remarked that he could support Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion, adding, “Oh, I can support folks at the top paying their fair share … There was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90%, even during Reagan’s era in the 1980s it was around 50%.”

Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, urged “that we get more serious about making sure the corporations pay their fair share. He continued, “During this campaign, if I run, I’m going to be very up front with the American people on how we would do that because I think that they are owed that, but it is worth it. It is worth it in this country for us to do that,” he said, vowing not to be “a single issue candidate.”

In 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, never averse to raising taxes, also brought up the Eisenhower tax rates during the Iowa presidential debate. Sanders was asked about tax rates, “Well, let’s get specific, how high would you go? You’ve said before you’d go above 50 percent. How high?” He responded, “We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was 90%.”

But as the Tax Foundation explained in 2017, it is true that the top federal income tax rate was 91% for most of the the 1950’s, but the top 1% of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42% of their income in taxes. The Tax Foundation explains that the 91% bracket of 1950 only applied to households with income over $200,000, the equivalent of roughly $2 million today. Additionally, the high tax rate only applied to income above $200,000, not to every single dollar earned.

0

Ocasio-Cortez Tax Plan Creates 82.7% Top Income Tax Rate for New Yorkers

capture

By Alex Hendrie

In an upcoming 60 Minutes interview, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will call for federal income tax rates of up to 70 percent as part of a proposal to create vast new government spending programs.

The current top federal income tax rate is 37 percent, so the Ocasio-Cortez plan will nearly double the tax rate for the top bracket.

New York State has a top income tax rate of 8.82 percent while New York City has a top rate of 3.876 percent. So under this proposal, her constituents would pay a top combined income tax rate of 82.7 percent:

Federal income tax rate:   70.0%
NY state income tax rate: 8.82%
NYC income tax rate:       3.876%
TOTAL:                                 82.696%

See the source image

New Yorkers would not be the only ones suffering under the Ocasio-Cortez plan. California taxpayers would pay a top rate of 83.3 percent (70 percent plus the California rate of 13.30 percent).

In addition to this high income tax rate, taxpayers would remain impacted by other taxes including payroll taxes, taxes on capital gains income and dividends, and the death tax.

Further, while Ocasio-Cortez has not released details of any other tax hikes to pay for her plan, this would likely not be the only income tax increase if she had her way. For instance, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed a $2 trillion 2.2 percent payroll tax on all families and a $10 trillion 6.2 percent payroll tax on all businesses as part of his socialized healthcare plan.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) have proposed numerous tax hikes including a new, 5 percent surtax on those making $500,000 per year and an increase in the Obamacare payroll tax from 0.9 percent to 4 percent.

Regardless of the specific proposal, it is clear that Democrats want higher taxes on the American people as they made clear when they changed the House rules to make it easier to raise taxes.

Just last night, Democrats rejected a proposal to make permanent the $2,000 child tax credit (up from 1,000) and the $24,000 standard deduction for families (up from $12,000).

Based on their record this will not be the first of many cases where Democrats oppose middle class tax relief and advocate for higher taxes on the American people.

0

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposes 70% Taxation to Pay for ‘Green New Deal’

See the source image

By Joel B. Pollak

Newly-installed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling for 70% taxation on the wealthy as a way to pay for her “Green New Deal,” which proposes to use government to create new jobs by investing in renewable energy.

In an interview set to air Sunday on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Ocasio-Cortez — who has begun referring to herself by the nickname, “AOC” — told Anderson Cooper that the “Green New Deal” would “require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now,” including raising taxes to a marginal rate of 70%, as in the 1960s.

AOC referred to the 70% rate on people at the “tippy-tops” as the rich merely paying their “fair share” of the tax burden.

See the source image

She compared the “Green New Deal” to other “radical” policies like President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launching Social Security in the New Deal.

As Breitbart News has noted, the “Green New Deal” is in fact an old idea, first championed by President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones. It seeks to implement classic socialist policies of state-run enterprises, using the pretext of an environmental crisis.

To that end, proponents often exaggerate the threat of climate change and other environmental challenges. AOC herself has warned of “cataclysmic climate disaster” unless the United States moves to 100% renewable energy sources in the next ten years.

In comparison, California — the most ambitious state in “green” energy policy — has merely set itself a goal of 100% renewables by 2045, more than 25 years away.

Obama’s “green jobs” program was a notable failure, with many investments failing to pay off — most notoriously the solar panel company Solyndra, which failed after Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and others held it up as a model.

0

THE ‘GREEN NEW DEAL’: A RADICAL MANDATE FOR GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

Image result for pictures of alexandria ocasio cortez

By Tom Elliott

‘Ocasio-Cortez sees this plan is being a vehicle through which social equality might finally realized, as it will use reparations to right historical injustices’

Incoming New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brings with her a massive online following, influence she says she’ll deploy only in support of candidates and politicians who support her plan for a “Green New Deal.”

“The Green New Deal” is something Ocasio-Cortez invokes frequently in media appearances and rallies.

So what’s actually in it?

Her office recently released the text of a proposed House rules change outlining the plan.

The proposed rule change for the upcoming 116th Congress would require the creation of a “Select Committee for a Green Deal” that would be responsible for creating the plan by January 1, 2020, with corresponding draft legislation soon after. The text of the rule change lays out the committee’s jurisdiction and required areas of action.

Its scope and mandate for legislative authority amounts to a radical grant of power to Washington over Americans’ lives, homes, businesses, travel, banking, and more.

Early on, under “Jurisdiction,” the document makes clear its grandiose philosophical vision: “The select committee shall have authority to develop a detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan for the transition of the United States economy to become greenhouse gas emissions neutral and to significantly draw down greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and oceans and to promote economic and environmental justice and equality.”

See the source image

In addition to achieving its goal of “meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources,” the document also repeatedly states the Green New Deal will advance non-environmental projects, such as, “social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice.” 

Ocasio-Cortez’s plan further claims it will (virtually) eliminate poverty: “The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that a national, industrial, economic mobilization of this scope and scale is a historic opportunity to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”

More specifically, Ocasio-Cortez’s plan calls for, within 10 years, a series of lofty overhauls of American life [emphasis added]:

  • The installation of a “national, energy-efficient, “smart grid.”
  • “Upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety”
  • “Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries” as well as from America’s transportation and infrastructure network
  • Funding “massive investment” in reducing existing greenhouse gasses

Between its calls for “upgrading” homes and overhauling travel, public infrastructure, and even the way Americans consume electricity, the plan leaves virtually no facet of everyday life untouched. Think of how often you don’t use electricity to imagine how much of your average day the plan wouldn’t impact.

See the source image

The proposed committee would also have seemingly total oversight of American industry, with a mandate for pushing union membership. Under “Scope of the Plan,” a section on labor states the committee’s final plan shall: “Require strong enforcement of labor, workplace safety, and wage standards that recognize the rights of workers to organize and unionize free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment, and creation of meaningful, quality, career employment.”

Later in the document, Ocasio Cortez’s plan imagines creating a national jobs force to help people participate in this “transition.” The Green New Deal, it says, shall “provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”

The plan also imagines creating governmental support for “transitioning” minority communities. The deal shall: “ensure a ‘just transition’ for all workers, low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm including by ensuring that local implementation of the transition is led from the community level.”

More, Ocasio-Cortez sees this plan is being a vehicle through which social equality might finally realized through the use of reparations to right historical injustices. The final Green New Deal will “mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished, low income, deindustrialized or other marginalized communities in such a way that builds wealth and ownership at the community level).”

And if that weren’t enough to ensure that Democratic Socialism could be fully realized in America, the plan includes failsafe in the form of universal income and Medicare for All: The plan, it says, shall “include additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism.”

Ocasio-Cortez clarifies that this plan would not only need to be financed by taxpayers, but also the Federal Reserve and other institutions the government can create. The end of the document contains a Q&A, one of which deals with the plan’s funding: “The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed.”

Ocasio-Cortez may not be in Congress yet, but she already has a plan to remake the way Americans drive, commute, live, work, and even use the financial system. Let there be little doubt how she aspires to wield power in Washington.
Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with grammatical fixes. 

 

0

Sheila Jackson-Lee Quietly Introduces Bill To BLOCK Taxpayer Money From Building The Wall

Published 1 hour ago by 
Capture

Democrat congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee quietly introduced a bill called the “Protect American Taxpayers and Secure Border Act.”

The bill, with a title that means the exact opposite of what it proposes, was introduced on December 19 and now sits in the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.

Here is the text of the bill:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

Trending: CONFIRMED: The Government CAN Build The Wall With Brian Kolfage’s GoFundMe Money

This Act may be cited as the “Protect American Taxpayers and Secure Border Act”.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITIONS AND REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO BORDER SECURITY.

(a) In General.—No taxpayer funds may be obligated or expended to build a wall or barrier intended to impede travel between Mexico and the United States.

(b) Foreign Payment Required.—Any wall or barrier described in subsection (a) that is proposed to be built shall be paid for using funds provided by the Government of Mexico.

(c) Securing The Southern Border.—The Secretary of Homeland Security shall take such actions as may be necessary to secure the southern border by making maximum effective utilization of technology and improved training of U.S. Custom and Border Protection agents and officers.

(d) Increase In Immigration Judges.—The Attorney General may appoint 100 additional immigration judges in addition to immigration judges currently serving as of the date of the enactment of this Act.

(e) Humanitarian Assistance.—The Secretary of Homeland Security shall take such actions as may be necessary to ensure that humanitarian assistance is provided to immigrants, refugees, and other displaced persons who are in need of medical assistance and aid to sustain health and life.

 

0

SOCIALIST OCASIO-CORTEZ SUDDENLY CONCERNED ABOUT GOV’T SPENDING AMID BORDER WALL PUSH

See the source image

Silent on giving $10 billion in aid to Mexico, Central America

The American Mirror – DECEMBER 22, 2018

Despite pushing for a socialist “Medicare for all” plan that countless experts argue would bankrupt the nation, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now all of a sudden concerned about paying for things.

On Thursday, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives approved $5.7 billion in fundingfor the wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The measure has not yet been voted on in the Senate amid ongoing negotiations, and the partial government shut down on Saturday morning.

But in response to the $5.7 billion for the wall in the House bill, the New York socialist took to Twitter to claim “no one’s asking the GOP how they’re paying for it.”

Capture

“And just like that, GOP discovers $5.7 billion for a wall. $5.7 billion… What if we instead added $5.7B in teacher pay? Or replacing water pipes? Or college tuition/prescription refill subsidies? Or green jobs? But notice how no one’s asking the GOP how they’re paying for it,” she wrote.

For starters, “no one” is asking how the GOP is “paying for it” because most people understand basic math and how the federal government works.

The federal government is funded by the taxpayers. When Congress passes a spending bill, it must allocate the necessary funding for the the following fiscal year to ensure all government can fully operate.

They didn’t “discover” the money out of thin air, it has been there the entire time. The issue is that in Congress, a spending bill requires a supermajority, meaning 60 votes in the Senate.

No Democrats are agreeing to vote in favor of the House-passed package, so negotiations are ongoing about how much funding — which the government already has — will be allocated for “border security.”

Aside from Ocasio-Cortez not even having a rudimentary understanding of how government works, which she will be part of in a week, many are wondering why she’s not all of a sudden concerned about spending money.

See the source image

0

WashPost Op-Ed: Girl’s Death Shows Americans Are a Threat to Migrants

See the source image

By Neil Munro

The death of a migrant girl shows that Americans are a threat to migrants, says Never Trump author Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post.

“It’s a cruel irony that [President Donald] Trump has portrayed refugees as a threat to Americans. In fact, the reverse is true,” Rubin wrote in a column that slammed any barrier or regulatory curbs on the flow of economic migrants into the United States.

Rubin’s column was headlined “Horrifying indifference to children’s lives,” and it cited the death of seven-year Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal, who was brought over the New Mexico border by her father, Nery Gilberto Caal Cuz. The subheadline on the article declared: The Trump administration certainly is responsible for death of a child in its custody.”

See the source image

Fewer migrants will die while sneaking across the border if the federal government just provides a better welcome and easier asylum rules, Rubin argues:

With adequate border security and staffing, a sufficient number of immigration judges deployed to handle the caseload, reversal of the administration’s deliberately cruel policies … the current, intolerable situation should improve.

Rubin ignored the alternative policy of discouraging migration by careful enforcement of the nation’s laws against illegal migration and the employment of illegals.

Rubin also did not mention the thousands of illegal migrants who are rescued by the border patrol each year, nor the tens of thousands who are by border agents to file clearly fraudulent cases which are subsequently rejected by judges.

Capture

Also, Rubin did not mention the moral responsibility of the child’s father who brought her through the desert in an apparent effort to use the catch-and-release Flores loophole to get past border guards. The loophole was created by Judge Dolly Gee who has ordered border officials to release migrants after 20 days if they bring a child with them.

The AP reported that the father was an economic migrant:

Family members in Guatemala said Caal decided to migrate with his favorite child to earn money he could send back home. Jakelin’s mother and three siblings remained in San Antonio Secortez, a village of about 420 inhabitants.

Economic migrants are not eligible for asylum.

But Rubin posted a litany of complaints by open-borders groups, including the ACLU and America’s Voice, who argue that curbs on illegal migrant force migrants to take more dangerous routines through the scrubland into the United States. Rubin cited the ACLU’s complaints:

In 2017, migrant deaths increased even as the number of border crossings dramatically decreased. When the Trump administration pushes for the militarization of the border, including more border wall construction, they are driving people fleeing violence into the deadliest desert regions.

Rubin exemplifies the open-borders advocates who hide their views underneath a blizzard of nit-picking complaints about minor aspects of the nation’s popular border-control rules. For example, she quoted one activist’s complaints that the temporary holding centers along the border are characterized by “freezing temperatures, no beds, lights left on, no showers, not enough toilets or toilet paper, filthy conditions, horrible smell, inedible food and not enough clean water to drink, and [are] run by insulting and abusive agents.”

But Rubin declined to say if the United States has a right to protect its borders or to deport foreign migrants from the United States. She showed indifference to the huge economic and civic costs to ordinary Americans of cheap-labor migration into the nation’s blue-collar and middle-class workplaces,  neighborhoods, hospitals, welfare centers, and K-12 schools.

Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News:

The Democrats are using this [death] cynically as a cudgel against the very idea of immigration enforcement. It is shameless. It is really shameless.

The left is objectively in favor of open borders. They deny it if you ask them straight out, but they are opposed to any meaningful measure to enforce the borders. Any time there is a tragedy like this they immediately turn it into an excuse for weakening the borders — and say at the same when you point to an illegal immigrant criminal [as a reason] for tightening the borders, they charge you with acting irresponsibly.

…

The logical conclusion of the Democrats’ outrage over this is that there should be no border enforcement because any rules about border control will also create people who evade them, and it is an evasion of the laws that is the responsible (mechanism] for this tragedy. The only logical conclusion is that we must have open borders.

For example, Democrats are now describing the detention centers used to hold migrant parents together with their children prior to their release or asylum hearings as illegitimate “internment camps.”

Capture

This “internment” claim comes after Democrats decried the governments’ release of children to government-run shelters while their parents were detained prior to court hearings.

Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white collar and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor that blue collar and white collar employees.

The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real-estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.

0

Round five: Yellow Vests prepare for massive ‘Macron resign’ protest on Saturday

Round five: Yellow Vests prepare for massive ‘Macron resign’ protest on Saturday

Paris is bracing for yet another round of Yellow Vest protests, with demonstrators planning to take to the streets on Saturday. More than 10,000 people have already RSVP’d on Facebook to the ‘Acte 5: Macron Démission’ march.

The demonstration is scheduled to take place in the French capital on the Champs-Élysées.

The organizers, consisting of some 15 groups, have outlined their list of demands on Facebook, saying they will continue their action against Macron until all their demands are met.

“Our organizations support the demands of tax and social justice brought by the movement of yellow vests. They call for demonstrations Saturday, December 15, for social justice and tax, for a real democracy, for equal rights, for a true ecological transition…” the planners said in a statement, as quoted by Le Parisien.

Similar demonstrations are also expected to take place in other cities across the country.

Security officials are gearing up for the protests, with Paris Police Chief Michel Delpuech stating that tens of thousands of cops will be deployed across France, and some 8,000 in Paris.

“We need to be prepared for worst-case scenarios,” he said.

Delpuech told RTL that authorities are aiming to be in “better control” of the situation than they were last weekend, when more than 125,000 people hit the streets of France, 10,000 of whom protested in Paris.

Those demonstrations saw clashes between protesters and police, with officers deploying tear gas and water cannon on people who threw Molotov cocktails, burned cars, and vandalized stores. Over 260 people were injured and 1,700 detained across the country.

Ahead of the demonstrations planned for Saturday, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said it was time for the Yellow Vest protesters to scale down their demonstrations and accept that they had achieved their aims, as Macron has granted concessions as a result of the rallies.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Police shot at us deliberately’: Friend of French woman who lost eye in Yellow Vest clashes to RT

“I’d rather have the police force doing their real job, chasing criminals and combating the terrorism threat, instead of securing roundabouts where a few thousand people keep a lot of police busy,” he said, just days after an attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg killed four people and injured around a dozen others.

© Reuters / REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

Earlier this week, Macron spoke to the nation in a televised address, saying he understood the concerns of protesters. In addition to canceling fuel tax increases that were scheduled to kick in next month, he said he would increase the minimum wage by 100 euros a month from January and reduce taxes for poorer pensioners, among other measures.

Even despite those concessions, Macron’s critics are still demanding that he resign, continuing to refer to him as “President of the Rich.”

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

0

LOL! Californians may be slapped with tax on short text messages

See the source image

The Californian state watchdog has proposed a new tax on text messages sent and received by mobile phone users every day. The odd measure to raise new taxes has sparked ridicule and outrage in the state.

According to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), funds raised from the text tax will be used to help lower-income California residents to get access to telecommunications services.

The CPUC says that the fee, which would total just 70 cents for every $10 in text messages, is not going to significantly raise the monthly amount paid by consumers in the state. The group, which responsible for regulating public utilities operating in the state, claims the tax would just shift some of the charges away from voice services toward texting.

Read more

A resident of the downtown area of Leiria city, central Portugal © Nacho Doce‘Daylight robbery’ tax in Portugal on property with a view

However, Bay Area Council along with other high-tech and corporate groups have raised voices against the proposal, saying that the text-messaging surcharges would cost consumers $44.5 million a year. According to the opponents, the SMS levy could be applied retroactively back as far as five years, sweeping away some $220 million.

At the same time, the industry representatives argued the state commission lacks legal grounds for introducing the tax of the kind. The wireless industry is reportedly working on a plan to prevent the measure.

“It’s a dumb idea,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council business-sponsored advocacy group. “This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it’s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.”

Vote for the proposal was initially scheduled for this week, but the CPUC reportedly postponed it till the next month after getting a lot of push back.

“From a consumer’s point of view, surcharges may be a wash, because if more surcharge revenues come from texting services, less would be needed from voice services,” CPUC spokeswoman Constance Gordon said in a statement.

0

Paris abandons fuel tax hike after sweeping protests – French PM

Paris abandons fuel tax hike after sweeping protests – French PM

The French government says it has dropped the fuel tax hike plan that has sparked massive Yellow Vests protests and eventually got suspended with a half-year moratorium Tuesday – at least for the 2019 budget.

“The government is ready for dialogue and is showing it because this tax increase has been dropped from the 2019 budget bill,” French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the lower house of parliament Wednesday.

Philippe did not clarify whether Paris might re-introduce the hike in a budget update later in 2019.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

ALSO ON RT.COMFrance’s Yellow Vest movement strikes a victory for working people across the EU

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑