Tax receipts on pace to hit record high

Huh, and at a time when personal income plunges to its biggest drop in 20 years. Wonder who's pay all these taxes? You know who...

FoxNews: As President Obama launches into the next phase of budget negotiations with Congress, recent estimates may lend credence to Republican claims that the federal coffers are well fed on taxes.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government is on pace to bring in a record $2.7 trillion in tax receipts this fiscal year.

The increase reflects a steady post-recession rise in revenues. They ticked up 6 percent in 2012, but according to the CBO could jump 11 percent in 2013.

The expected tax boost comes after Congress and the White House struck an eleventh-hour deal at the start of the year that allowed for an increase in tax rates for top earners, and for the expiration of a 2-point payroll tax cut. The agreement will play a big role in boosting revenues this year -- and is also the No. 1 reason cited by Republicans for not wanting to agree to more tax increases as part of a new budget deal.

When unemployment is at a stalemate and nearly half of Americans don't pay federal income taxes, 'tax the rich' actually means 'tax the working'. And as far as the sequester goes...

With the enactment of the sequester, Congress will cut deeper and deeper into discretionary spending. But costly entitlements will continue to grow, driving up the U.S. debt and also the annual interest taxpayers pay on that debt.

Hey, Obama's gotta pay his tab somehow...and he's not gonna stop spending, nor is he gonna tap into the sacred cow of entitlements, so all that's left are the working.

Buckley's fight is our fight!

For those individuals and publications of whom profess conservatism...remember Bill Buckley's fight?

On Monday's Mark Levin Show: Mark talks about CPAC and conservatism and reminds us of William Buckley, Jr. and what conservatism really means. How it is more than just a movement, it has to do with the basic fundamentals of what has made America great and the freedom to prosper and choose as we like. Instead of hearing from RINO's like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie, we should be focusing on true conservatives looking to re-save the nation. Shouldn't our number 1 issue be the survival of the Republic when so much is at stake?

Indeed it should, instead of ensnaring one's self in all of the Left's self-absorbed distractions that seek to tear down the Republic economically, socially, morally.

Levin read Buckley's 1955 mission statement for National Review magazine. "Among our convictions," Buckley wrote of the magazine's credenda, were these crucial components:

A. It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side.

B. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.

C. The century’s most blatant force of satanic utopianism is communism. We consider “coexistence” with communism neither desirable nor possible, nor honorable; we find ourselves irrevocably at war with communism and shall oppose any substitute for victory.

D. The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than “newness”) and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).

E. The most alarming single danger to the American political system lies in the fact that an identifiable team of Fabian operators is bent on controlling both our major political parties(under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as “national unity,” “middle-of-the-road,” “progressivism,” and “bipartisanship.”) Clever intriguers are reshaping both parties in the image of Babbitt, gone Social-Democrat. When and where this political issue arises, we are, without reservations, on the side of the traditional two-party system that fights its feuds in public and honestly; and we shall advocate the restoration of the two-party system at all costs.

Buckley also mentioned a few more: the need for competition, as opposed to unionized monopolies, including the necessity to tell the 'violated businessman's side of the story,' and the dangers of surrendering the nation's sovereignty to a world organization like the UN.

How far the Republican Party and too many who'd call themselves conservatives, including some who write for National Review today, have strayed from Buckley's conservative convictions...and how much we need to unite and return to those essential principles, so we might successfully fight back against the 'Fabian operators' of today.

FL legislature to Gov. Scott: 'NO' Obamacare Medicaid expansion

This should be the model for all state legislatures that are dealing with a Republican governor going wobbly...

theRightScoop: Thank goodness all Florida politicians aren’t made like Gov. Rick Scott. Today, the Florida House Select Committee rejected the Medicaid expansion arguing that the Feds can’t be trusted to keep their end of the deal.

As Rush said today on his show, forget 3 years from now. We don’t have the money that the feds are promising now to pay for these state’s Medicaid expansion. Hopefully the Florida legislature will hold strong and resist this terrible move by Gov. Scott:

Reuters: Florida Governor Rick Scott’s plan to expand Medicaid coverage to cover about 1 million more poor people suffered a setback on Monday when the proposal failed to make it out of a key state legislative committee hearing.

On the eve of convening of the 2013 session, the House Select Committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rejected the expansion. A Senate counterpart committee postponed consideration of the issue, which is sure to be one of the biggest controversies of the session.

“There’s definitely a fight between the governor and the (state) legislature over this. The Republicans in the legislature are much more fiscally conservative than his actions have shown him to be,” said Susan MacManus, a Tampa-based political scientist at the University of South Florida.

Republican legislative leaders have been openly hostile toward the plan, emphasizing that state lawmakers will make the final decision in drawing up a budget for next fiscal year.

While Democrats have pushed for full implementation of so-called “Obamacare,” the controlling Republican leadership has warned that the federal government might not keep its end of the bargain, leaving the state with a million more Medicaid recipients and reduced federal funding to cover them.

Bravo, Florida Legislature!

Real 2012 US deficit was $6.9 Trillion!

...but you won't find this reported anywhere in the press. Eric Sprott has divulged this tsunami of total expenditures and obligations...

MissionMiningCo: On Jan 17th, the Dept of Treasury released their GAAP budget deficit , and it was $6.9 TRILLION. That’s the change in present value of true obligations in ONE YEAR plus the cash deficit- total deficit $6.9 TRILLION! This is in a $16 trillion economy where politicians fight over $100 billion in spending cuts when the deficit is $6.9 T!

What I find most interesting about that number? You will not see it reported ANYWHERE in the public press!

You would think that would be something that would be deserving of some comment, but if you Google GAAP budget deficit 2012 you will not find it in any public news release, even though it was released by the Department of the Treasury. We’re just ignoring the biggest elephant in the room here, and that’s the way they want to work it- more disinformation.

You'll excuse me if I'm just not surprised by the MSM's negligence anymore. I'm certain most of you share the sentiment.

GodLikeProductions says, "Eric Sprott and others are among the few voices reporting how bad things really are. $6.9 trillion deficit in a (reported) $16 trillion GDP (which may be MUCH lower than than in reality)." They also ask why more Americans are shouting from the rooftops, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Indeed.

Based on generally-accepted-accounting principles—or GAAP-based accounting—the 2012 consolidated financial statements of the United States Government showed a $6.9 trillion deficit for fiscal 2012, up from $4.6 trillion in 2011. The latest detail showed the uncontainable and uncontrollable actual federal budget deficit to be deteriorating rapidly. The GAAP-based statements were published by the U.S. Treasury January 17th.

Based on tentative calculations from numbers in the report, total U.S. government obligations—including the NPV of the unfunded-liabilities of social programs—is around $88 trillion, or nearly six-times annual U.S. GDP.

If Washington can't understand that this is THE reason to cut spending now, then we're doomed. Republicans should consider the previous post and defund Obamacare now as a start.

Additional link: SilverDoctors

IRS moves to collect billions in 'fees' from Obamacare

Here's how Obamacare seeks to run private insurance out of business, moving the entirety of the industry into the monopolized single-payer hands of the federal government...

TheHill:The Internal Revenue Service on Friday unveiled its proposal to raise tens of billions of dollars through annual fees on health insurers, prompting fierce criticism from industry groups who warn the costs will be passed along to consumers.

The proposed rule from President Obama's healthcare law will be published for public consideration in Monday’s Federal Register.

The rule would assess annual fees on most insurers that would total $8 billion next year and rise thereafter, eclipsing $14 billion in 2018, according to the IRS. The fees would vary in size, depending on a firm’s net premiums, and would come due by Sept. 30 every year.

Insurers that don’t pay on time would face penalties of $10,000, plus $1,000 for every day they miss deadline.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the leading trade group for the insurance industry, blasted the fees as a tax that would exceed $100 billion in the next decade and hit average families still struggling to rebound from the economic recession.

The group estimates that an average family’s health insurance would rise by more than $300 next year, with that total surpassing $500 in subsequent years.

Also to note, private health insurance is not taxed...but when it's federalized through Obamacare, these so-called 'fees' or 'penalties' are TAXES! And reiterating the industry experts, that tax will be passed on to the consumer.

All those fools who thought their preventative care and contraceptives were free, while their premiums were rising to cover that mandate...how are they gonna feel about this? Of course, we know how Obama will explain it: he'll say it's all the insurers' fault, they're greedy, and that the government will save you.

Time to wake the hell up, folks.

Laugh of the Day: The sky's not falling!

In honor of Sequester Day, as well as the end of another exhausting political week, I'd like to spread some March cheer direct from the DailyRushbo...in song, of course!





The sky's not falling, so have an excellent weekend!

H/t: Paul Shanklin!

Obama will continue to use sequester to blame Republicans (UPDATE)

I've already referenced this snip-it in a previous post, but just wanted to allow it to stand independently in its own post to illustrate the predictability of this joker...specifically as Levin called it Thursday evening while analyzing Obama's walkback:

"I want to let you in on another thing...the economy is not growing; the economy is flat dead. And when numbers come out on the unemployment side, and numbers come out on job growth, such as it is, and numbers come out on the gross domestic product, they're not gonna be very good, and Obama wants to be able to blame the sequester on his failed policies. So, what he wants to do is pour everything into this sequester, which is why he's saying it's not gonna be felt in a week...two weeks, three weeks, maybe a month; but when the statistics start to come out and show you how damaging the Obama policies have been, he will use the sequester and blame the Republicans."

Is that not precisely what he did this morning?



HA!  Great call, Mark.

This also explains why he wouldn't dream of entertaining that proposed Senate GOP deal to hand the responsibility over to him. He doesn't want it!

...after all, he's 'not a dictator.' No, no, no...no matter how much he acts the part.

UPDATE: And the media have their marching orders...

Andrew Breitbart: Remembering a Warrior

“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” ~ Lao Tzu

You can go to Breitbart.com and find a host of articles from friends and colleagues remembering Andrew Breitbart today on the one year anniversary of his untimely death. All of them capture the impact that Andrew made on those around him, as well as reflect the movement of new media that he helped to usher in during this modern age of leftist establishment mainstream media sycophants.

Best friend (since childhood) and business partner Larry Solov reflects from that Lao Tzu quote...

He was a flame that burned twice as bright. It was in his DNA.

But if Andrew’s flame burned half as long, his legacy will never burn out. To the contrary, it will only burn brighter and brighter. It is one of love and laughter, of an amazing family consisting of his widow Susie and their four extraordinary young children, and of a friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.

It burns in my heart and the heart of all those who loved him and whom he so deeply affected. It also burns as his mission continues and expands at Breitbart News Network. In his book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save The World (which was largely written at my kitchen table while I hovered over Andrew forcing him to focus) he wrote some words I find particularly pertinent about that mission.

First:

The left does not win its battles in debate. It doesn't have to. In the twenty-first century, media is everything. The left wins because it controls the narrative. The narrative is controlled by the media. The left is the media. Narrative is everything. I call it the Democrat-Media Complex--and I am at war to gain back control of the American narrative.

Second:

Walk toward the fire. Don't worry about being called a racist, a homophobe, a sociopath, a violent heteronormative xenophobe with fascistic impulses. They say all those things about you because they're keeping you inside the Complex, forcing you to respond to their playbook. They want to stop you in your tracks. But if you keep going, if you tell them you can stop their verbal bullets and keep walking, you'll send messages to people who are rooting for you, who agree with you. That's how you build an invincible movement willing to play by its own rules.

...while editor-in-chief Joel Pollak's turn to Andrew's last speech to the team: Seek, and Expose, the Left!

Andrew gathered the editorial team in the center of our former office, a giant warehouse space with a row of desks above overlooking a recreation area below. We were just a few days from the re-launch of the website.

Most of the editorial staff, scattered around the country, had flown to LA for a week of intense training in the new technology that would power the website. While we learned, we still had to work, putting up posts and videos.

To the muffled sound of typing, Andrew began his pep talk.

The re-launch was the culmination of months of intense work, hundreds of design meetings and long conference calls, he said. The new website meant a new mission. We would no longer solely be a set of blogs. We were going to focus our energy on driving narratives and leading the news cycle, constantly.

But the news we covered would not be the same news everyone else was watching, he said. Andrew grew more animated as he described what he meant. He emphasized, for example, how radical fringes of the left were providing some of the most important content to the mainstream media, and how mainstream political and entertainment figures were driving that process by encouraging the radicals.

Tracing those connections, Andrew said, was one of the many important investigative projects that needed to be done--and that the mainstream media would not do. As far as he was concerned, he said, that was the news. It explained how radical ideas that had circulated in remote corners of the Internet would pass through outlets like Current TV and MSNBC and eventually find their way to the headlines of the local nightly news bulletin.

It has been a mad year. And a successful one. Andrew would have been proud to see how far we have come.

Yet we are still making the transition he envisioned. And the attacks--from the Obama machine, the institutional left, and the mainstream media--are multiplying.

Our mission remains that which Andrew gave to us. And it remains daring. I could not be prouder than I am to be part of the team Andrew built.

Perhaps bittersweet, just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of the unexpected death of her beloved son, Arlene Breitbart passed away in Los Angeles of natural causes (RIP 1925-2013). May she rest eternal with her magnificent little warrior, who grew up to challenge the corruption of the old media and helped bring about the rise of a new venue.

Happy Sequestration Day!

Erick Erickson of RedState says, "Americans should be happy." After running through a quick review of how the sequester came about, Erickson turns to the day at hand:

Now we have arrived at the day most thought would never come.

In the run up to today, President Obama resorted to a campaign of fear mongering. He decided to make sequestration a blunt instrument. Instead of using his executive discretion to make careful cuts, he found ways to make the cuts appear disastrous, spooky, and painful for the American people. In the last week it would have come as no surprise to hear the president, given his increasing hyperbole about sequestration, to claim it would cause both erectile dysfunction and hospitals to finish off the infirm and elderly without so much as a visit to a death panel.

But the hyperbole did not work. Sequestration has arrived.

In all the talk, chatter, punditry, and hyperbole, one thing has been forgotten. This fight has never been about where to make cuts, but whether to make cuts at all. House Republicans offered several plans to alter the cuts. The Democrats would never consider them. The Democrats, instead, preferred raising taxes and, in sequestration, got one of their long held wishes of defense cuts.

The Democrats were never serious about real spending cuts, which is why the president could be so unserious at his campaign style rallies claiming sequestration would cause furloughs for teachers, policemen, and fire fighters, none of whom are even employed by the federal government.

The game now is predictable. Democrats will try to make the sequestration cuts as painful as possible on the American people. They will stop spending in areas that will do maximum harm and inconvenience to the lifestyle of the American citizen. They want Americans to think any cuts in spending at all are too disruptive.

The president and Democrats do not have to do this. They could make reasonable cuts. But if they do they will show spending cuts are possible without major disruption, pain, and inconvenience. That would give away the game.

The truth is, though, inescapable. Today the sun came up. Americans went about their daily lives. The federal government was open for business. The mail ran. The Mayans were not right.

Americans are reminded that Washington can, in fact, cut its budget and the world will not end. The only better reminder of this would be a government shutdown. We can only hope.

If you caught Levin's program last night, about midway through the program he listed out all the parts of government that were exempted (SS, Medicare, military pay, etc.), in other words unaffected, and continued to run smoothly during government shutdowns under both Reagan and Clinton. Obama's got it even easier with sequestration, and, like the executives of the past, his branch controls what to cut and where to cut. But as Erickson points out, and so have many others, Obama wants to make these cuts the most painful on average Americans to insist upon his faulty ideological philosophy that he knows best, cuts don't work, and that we mustn't interrupt the federal spending spree. He can continue to blame Republicans all he wants, but we'll see if he's able to get away with that when his executive branch directs the cuts before the American People.

Beyond all the rhetoric and hysteria, though, sequestration is simply a first step in the right direction.

Related links: Happy Sequester Day: Small Spending Reductions Have Taken Effect
Obama Blames Republicans Again for 'Dumb' Sequester Crisis: 'I am Not a Dictator, I am the President'

GOP elites contribute to the abolition of marriage

At a time when the nation literally hangs in economic limbo from massive debt and unemployment, and sequestration is upon us, the House of Bush, along with other recognized Republican elites, have come up with a plan: abandon the economy and federalize social issues. Say, weren't these the same guys telling us to drop the social issues?!

Yes, these folks seem as unconcerned with the economic state of the nation as Congress and the President. So while their initiatives to legalize illegals have slowed, they now find their spidey senses tingling towards the gay community. They'd rather turn to more identity politics and target a demographic they've got no prayer of harvesting enough votes from to make a difference for their unprincipled version of the Republican Party. As a result, they not only waste time pandering, but also chase away more of the conservative base that's fed up with their antics. Brilliant.

Running concurrently with another brief signed by Big Government corporate titans (go figure!), Jeffrey Lord reports on a group of GOP elites who "have run to the Supreme Court demanding the judiciary shut off debate on gay marriage."

The story has predictably been front page news at the New York Times and in the world of the liberal media, the Times leading with this:

More than two dozen Republicans — including a top adviser to Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and a former congresswoman who made banning same-sex marriage her signature issue — have added their names to a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to declare that gay couples have a constitutional right to wed.

The brief comes as the White House is considering whether to weigh in on the same-sex marriage case; at this point, the Republicans who signed the document are taking a more expansive stance than President Obama, who favors same-sex marriage but has said he would leave it to the states, as opposed to making it a constitutional right.

The list of Republicans on the brief now tallies more 100, organizers say. It now includes Beth Myers, who ran Mr. Romney’s 2008 campaign and was a senior adviser to him in 2012, and Marilyn Musgrave, a retired Colorado congresswoman who was once rated the most conservative member of the House by the American Conservative Union.

Ms. Musgrave, who lost her bid for a fourth term in 2008, was an unsuccessful sponsor of a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex couples from marrying; she once warned that if gay couples were allowed to wed, “the next step is polygamy or group marriage.”

The brief, organized by Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who is gay, will be filed on Thursday as a friend-of-the-court, or amicus, brief to a lawsuit that seeks to overturn Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that bars same-sex marriage, and all similar bans.

Some of the signatories’ names are published here at the Blaze. The group — including names such as Ted Olson (the Bush 43 Solicitor General), Meg Whitman (the last GOP nominee for Governor of California), Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York, ex-Bush-appointed RNC chairman (and 2004 Bush campaign manager) Ken Mehlman, Bush national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, Bush commerce secretary Carlos Guitierrez, Bush deputy attorney general James B. Comey and Reagan budget director David Stockman — has decided to force gay marriage on the American people without their consent.

Effectively making of this case a gay Roe v. Wade.

That's exactly what these RINOs are up to...except rather misleadingly.

They've watched an Obama administration shove the so-called Affordable Care Act down America's collective throat, they've felt the progressive winds of class warfare strengthen, then they experienced a pricely defeated in an election year that the liberal media continues to tell them to this day had more to do with identity politics than the fact that many of their candidates didn't stand for anything principled, and thus many Americans didn't bother to support them (not to mention that most of the conservative candidates faced twofold attacks). All of this and more, though, has left a stinging bite with the Republican Establishment. Yet, instead of reaccessing themselves, they ignorantly blame and attack their base, before the liberal media, as well as alongside them. And in their desperation to be liked by the media miscreants, they've said 'bon voyage' to principle, specifically morality, and 'hello' to their own brand of identity politics...an area that has already been mastered by the Democratic Party, whom they stand no chance of outgunning. No matter...if at first you don't succeed, cast aside morality altogether (never mind that all law is based on the moral order of right and wrong), and pretend to support, anything really, in a disingenuous effort to garner votes (as I said earlier, votes that they have no chance in hell of substantively gathering).

But beyond moral arguments, the biggest offense is that these guys are acting just like the liberal statists: when you can't get something passed locally, run to the federal level and force it upon all the people!

Sadly, what’s really going on here is that this list of Republicans on this brief, some of whom I know and certainly have high regard for as former colleagues — have suddenly decided they can’t trust the American people.

Indeed, one of the Republican signers of this brief is former Utah governor Jon Huntsman. Who makes his case for signing over at the American Conservative. Read closely and you will see the problem. Huntsman says he tried to persuade the people of Utah to support civil unions — but that “70 percent of Utahns were opposed.”

So Huntsman is joining Mehlman and this GOP crew and running to the Supreme Court of the United States to join in yet another left-wing bid to have a handful of un-elected judges make this decision for the rest of us. Do Utahans oppose gay marriage? Tough cookies is Huntsman’s response. He will no longer try to persuade — he will get the Court to do his bidding. Just as that same Court made that decision on abortion. And yes — slavery.

One would think that these Republicans would know that the absolute best way to win over the mind of the American people on a controversial issue is to go to them directly and make the case. To have enough respect for their intelligence and sense of fairness.

One would certainly think...and there lies the problem with these ruling class Republican elites. And if they can't persuade, they'll run roughshod over you, and do what they want to do...just like the Left. They could care less about their communities, as long as they can pander to what's perceived as the 'in' thing to do for votes. What they fail to see (or maybe they do and just don't care), is that while they're placating to one group of people who from all indications have rejected them massively in favor of the Democratic Party, they're turning what's always traditionally been their base off and against them.

Lord concludes with a grim prognosis...

...in this rush to political correctness, not to mention appealing for votes, the GOP elites who have signed this brief are oblivious to the idea that they are seen as signing not a Supreme Court brief — but a death warrant.

A death warrant that down the road means one thing, and one thing only. One thing that will, to say the least, hardly be celebrated at campaign time:

The effective abolition of marriage in America.

Compounded with the corruption of an age-old sacred institution, this also effectively contributes to the destruction of the key opposition party to the statist Democrats...and on a microcosmic scale of what that famous saying states about a great civilization being conquered, 'not from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.'