Colorado Right

Bravo to Congressman Campbell:

California Republican John Campbell yesterday introduced in the House his “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act,” which would amend the tax code to allow individuals to make voluntary donations to the federal government above their normal tax liability. The bill would place a new line on IRS tax forms to make this easy.

Mr. Campbell says he has heard the “cries” of those wealthy Americans – Mrs. Clinton, Warren Buffett, Barbra Streisand – who reject the lower tax rates passed in 2001 and 2003 and complain that they and their fellow rich don’t pay enough. “It’s a great injustice that citizens wishing to fulfill their dream of paying more taxes cannot simply check a box on their 1040 form to make a donation,” he says. His bill would give liberals a chance to salve their consciences without having to raise taxes on millions of Americans who already feel overtaxed as it is.

My simple predictions:

1.  The Democrats will never let this bill see any light of day.  it will be holed up in some House subcommittee undergoing “review” till this Congress is history.  It would be a most dangerous thing for Democrats to actually give people the freedom to make their own choices - especially about how much of their hard earned money goes to the government.  Allowing people to choose this essential hold over their lives would absolutely destroy the whole premise of what the Democrats stand for.  They are about controlling people - not giving them choice.

2.  Why is Warren Buffett giving most of his money to Bill Gates’s charity instead of just handing it over to the government?  He wants rich people to pay more in taxes - why is he not giving the earnings of his lifetime to some twits who would spend in all in less than a month?

3.  As a thought experiment - just how much money would actually come in if this box were on the 1040 form making it extremely simple to allow good progressives to put their money where their considerable mouths are?  The Treasury got about $2.9 million in contributions last year.  The US governnment is scheduled to spend $3 trillion dollars in FY2008.  My calculations show that as spending $5,707,762 a minute.  Yes, every minute of every day of every week of every month of the whole year.  So that lousy three million in contributions would only fund the government for 30 seconds odd.    Do you think they would get enough in “contributions” to fund 2 minutes?  I certainly don’t think they would.  Maybe, just maybe they might get enough for 1 minute.

4.  And don’t forget - you are not paying enough in taxes.  The Obamamessiah says so.  The Hildebeast says so.  The Great and Wonderous Algore certainly says so.   But would they give half their estates directly to the governement?

The Campaign Spot at NRO reminds us what is now part of The Obamamessiah’s standard stump speech:

The top mortgage lenders spend $185 million lobbying Congress, and we wonder why Washington looked the other way when they were tricking families into buying homes they couldn’t afford.

Tricking them?  Has anyone who has gone through the mortgage process knows (and as Jim Geraghty notes as well) it takes hours to go through all the documentation and sign everything.  That’s tricking someone?

These are supposed to be legal adults with the ability to freely enter into contracts - legally binding obligations.  They knew that getting a mortgage with absolutely no money down was a risk.  They knew that trying to buy a house and only being able to afford and interest-only loan is about as financially risky a more as a person could take.  They were all betting on the fact that “the good times will roll forever”.   The people “buying” the house (pretty much renting with the hope of getting some money out in a couple of years when they could flip it), the people originating the mortgage, the companies packaging the mortgages into complex debt obligations , the fund managers clamoring for something that paid them more than the 1% they could get from money funds - all these people were betting on something happening that didn’t.

But let’s do a little thought experiment.  What if the merry-go-round were still functioning today?  House prices in the Democratic Communist People’s Republics on the coasts were soaring at 20% a year, the money for mortgages was flying in to those NINJA (no income, no job, no assest) loans, the weasels in government were getting their big tax cuts from increased sales and increased property values.  What if all that were still going on?  Would the government be justified to jump in and say “its all our free money that’s fueling this - we need to get an extra 10% cut on every house sale for the next three years”?  Think that sort of “government intervention” in the markets would be welcomed?

Of course it wouldn’t.  But then why all the clamor for taxpayers to give even more money to this set of complete fiscal boobs?

At least according to some nannyist in New Zealand:

New Zealanders eat more butter per head than any other nationality and Auckland University epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson says that’s why our cholesterol levels are also among the world’s highest.

“We have a health tax on alcohol and cigarettes and there should be a health tax on butter. It’s the most poisonous commonly consumed food in New Zealand. It’s about the purest form of saturated fat you can eat and it has no protein and no calcium. Butter has had all the good things taken out and just left the poison.”

People have been eating butter for as long as we have been keeping cows. But some dope decides that a special health tax is needed on this product? Just what should that health tax be? 10%? 20%? 90%? 2000%? And what would this money be used for? To pay for professors to run studies that will make absolutely no impact on anyone other than the professor’s salaries?

If we keep buying into this junk it only encourages them. But how long before a butter tax is proposed in the US Congress?

Let’s see, 18 designs and $200,000 already spent. Projected total cost $1 million. And this is for one wheelchair access ramp? Only in the Democratic Communist People’s Republic of San Francisco:

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities.

There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning.

What I’m most shocked about is that Pravda of the Left Coast is saying that this is not a good use of tax money. And why must this million bucks be spent? The Lifetime Employment for Lawyers Act (also known as the ADA). One of the supervisors is a paraplegic and there are only steps up to the podium.

I have an idea for these guys. Hire someone at $80K a year who’s whole job is to stand around and haul any disabled people up and down the steps. Have him buy some plywood and 2×4’s and in his spare time build the fracking ramp. And even with salary, benefits, expenses, vacation time, materials, and everything else you would still be able to get the job done for less than $150K. Even if it took a whole year.

Or just have him haul the disabled up and down and you have a decade’s worth of disability access without changing anything else.

Hey, you self-righteous progressives who chat about blood for oil. How many homeless people could have been fed with the $200,000 already spent on the 18 different designs? Would a million dollars get clean needles and condoms to the entire city for a year?

No ramps for condoms!

Or my name isn’t Gavin McTide Newsom!:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday he still wants to submerge giant turbines below the waters of the Golden Gate Bridge as a way to generate energy for the city, despite a study that recently concluded the idea would cost tens of millions of dollars and is not financially feasible.

And this boils the whole eco-fanasty movement down to one representative item. These things would be huge, expensive, and produce power that costs over 1000% more than you can generate elsewhere.

A study paid for by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission found that the turbines would cost as much as $15 million each and $750,000 a year to maintain.

Power generated from the tides would cost between 80 cents and $1.40 per kilowatt hour, according to the study. Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s commercial rate for power, for example, is 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

But does that mean anything to Mayor McTide? What does he care - he’s rich. If his electricity bill goes from $3,000 to $30,000 a month it wouldn’t bother him at all. His trust fund generates more than that per day. In fact, he’s already fired one insolent toady who refused to believe in the power of McTide:

The mayor’s push to drop turbines below the bridge became part of the recent controversy surrounding the high-profile firing of San Francisco PUC General Manager Susan Leal, who said she backed away from the proposal when she received the results of the study commissioned by her agency. City Hall insiders said her disagreement with Newsom over the future of tidal power was part of the reason Leal was ousted from her job late last month.

If you refuse to follow in the enlightened green and socialist pathways of the glorious leader you are eliminated to the greater good. Today its mostly figurative (just loss of income and status and such) but tomorrow it will be facing the wall and a bullet through the back of the head. Perhaps they will be as merciful as the Germans during WWII who would allow their Italian execution victims to turn their heads and view the ocean one last time before they were murdered - but since this is a GREEN issue probably not. Kneel down and take it in the back of the head - you denier.

And what’s most impossible about the whole thing is where they are actually proposing to put these huge turbines:

If officials eventually decide to submerge turbines in the bay, the hilly underwater topography in an area east of the Golden Gate Bridge, near the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, makes for the best location, the study found.

It has been 8 years since I was in Sausalito, but even back then while walking down the street in the space of 30 minutes we saw two different Rolls Royces. These people are seriously rich liberals. Do you think people with that kind of money are going to sit still and let some Socialist punk from San Francisco drop great big turbines in their ocean and spoil their view? This thing would be litigated until the next Big One shoves most of the place about 20 miles to the west and under water - and probably until the Big One after that as well.

This proposal has as much possibility of being realized as your odds are of finding a tap dancing snake. But pushing the idea sure enhances Mayor McTide’s green credentials.

Its nice to know that the Democratic Communist People’s Republic of San Francisco has this kind of money to waste:

In his quest to make San Francisco the greenest city in the nation, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently created a $160,000-a-year job for a senior aide and gave him the ambitious-sounding title of director of climate protection initiatives.

San Francisco has at least two dozen other city employees already working directly on climate issues at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In addition to the director of climate protection initiatives in Newsom’s office, San Francisco has an Energy and Climate Program team of eight people in the Department of the Environment, who combined earn more than $800,000 a year in salary and benefits, including a “climate action coordinator.” At least 12 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission staff members work on climate issues related to water and energy, including a $146,000-a-year “projects manager for the climate action plan.”

Also in the name of climate control, the Municipal Transportation Agency has a “manager of emissions reductions and sustainability programs” who works on making Muni’s bus fleet greener, and the San Francisco International Airport has a “manager of environmental services” who oversees such projects as the installation of energy-efficient lighting and solar panels.

The list doesn’t include the scores of staff members who work on broader environmental policies, like the recently hired $130,700-a-year “greening director” in Newsom’s office, or Jared Blumenfeld, who earns $207,500 a year in salary and benefits as the head of the city’s Environment Department, which has a staff of 65 and annual budget of about $14 million.

And you know you have completely gone off the deep end when the flipping Green Party commissioner questions what is going on:

“Although it sounds very well intentioned, and perhaps even necessary, I’m concerned this is a case where eco-chic has gone out of control,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the only Green Party member on the Board of Supervisors.

And the evidence continues to build that the whole global warming hysteria is a) religious in nature and b) a scheme for smart hustlers to shake down taxpayers.

And those who believe in “government investments” show just how much they actually put their money where their mouth is:

State lawmakers can rule out Virginian’s offering up more of their hard-earned money to fix the $1.4 billion budget shortfall Gov. Tim Kaine announced this week.

At least that is what a peek at the so-called “Tax Me More Fund” suggests.

Since its inception in 2002, the fund has collected a total of $10,217.04. 

In his book, “From Hope to Higher Ground,” Mr. Huckabee said that from 2001 to 2005, a total of 56 persons made contributions to the Arkansas fund, totaling $2,077. 

Don’t tax me or thee, but tax him over there behind that tree.

“The people of Virginia have voluntarily taxed themselves in the amount of 0.00000005 percent of Virginia’s budget since 2002, which is a good measure of their support for tax increases,” said Sen. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Fairfax County Republican. 

So why do we let Presidential candidates run around talking about how  wonderful it will be when everybody is taxed to death for “universal health care”?  Because everybody believes that it will be somebody else paying for it - not them!

So should governments encourage people to eat twinkies and smoke?

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

”It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. ”But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

And this really brings into sharp relief an interesting point about turning the responsibility over health care to a government.  While the initial jabber about universal healthcare is how wonderful it will be that no one has to worry about getting sick because the all-knowing Big Brother will take care of everyone - once you screw up the system and get government running  it, the focus becomes COST!  As in - holy crap this free health care costs tons of money.  And if we only have 25% of the population carrying everybody else, the productive ones will finally balk.

So it becomes a cost-benefit analysis - as in just how much cost can we shave off these silly people who are going to die anyway in order to keep the productive ones happy.  And government bureaucrats are really good at a) screwing over people who aren’t government bureaucrats and b) responding to political pressure.  So whoever screams the loudest gets the health care and the peasants are sent off to watch TV and die quietly in the corner.

Which this interesting little snippet in the story illustrates:

”This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.