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Marco Rubio – “We don’t need new taxes, we need new Taxpayers.” How many jobs and new taxpayers will President Obama’s proposed tax increases create?
New taxpayers are created by either creating new jobs or taxing more people. The prudent approach would be to do both. Creating new jobs should be the paramount goal of any new fiscal legislation initiated in Congress. The less popular goal of taxing more people should also be on the table. Currently, only about half of the income earners in the United States pay any income taxes, resulting in only the top 50% having a true stake in our Federal Government.
The mantra of “taxing the rich” plays well to the lower income earners who mistakenly believe they will escape the impact of such taxes. However, if taxes and tax rate changes were to have an effect on all income earners, the class warfare tactic used so often by Democrats, would be far less effective and perhaps some degree of civility between the classes would return.
Rubio went on to say later in the week about Obama, “He has to be measured by an objective standard that every president has to be measured by…and by every measure that you can measure a president by, things have gotten worse, and significantly worse…”
Senator Rubio blamed the President’s failings on a flawed ideology and incompetence. We could not agree more with the senator from Florida.
Casey Anthony Trial – The Jury’s returned verdict of “not guilty” on all felony charges against Casey Anthony was somewhat shocking to most that followed this trial. All of the “experts” agreed that the lead prosecutor did a superb job of proving the state’s case, only to turn on him after the verdict was returned. The true experts knew however, that the state’s case was doomed from the start. The circumstantial evidence collected in this case should have led the State of Florida to charge Ms. Anthony with a crime far less severe than first degree murder. In reality, without any murder weapon or any concrete evidence that could connect Ms. Anthony to a homicide in the death of young Caylee, Child Neglect, a felony, should have been the charge. Additionally, other charges involving the subsequent cover-up of Caylee’s death could have been charged, but in this case, the justice system worked.
The prosecution knew they only had one shot to make Casey Anthony answer for the death of her young daughter, yet it still went for broke. It was a gamble that resulted in Casey Anthony being released from custody a little more than a week after the trial ended.
Debt Limit Talks- Of the two parties, common sense tells us that only one of them is willing to take this issue seriously and that is the Republicans. While the Democrats seem content to play politics by provoking more class warfare with their tax increase rhetoric, and stirring up fears among the elderly with more Social Security demagoguery.
The most frustrating aspect of these negotiations is how the Republicans continue to fall prey to President Obama’s political gamesmanship. The best way for House Republicans to deal with this issue is to put their plan to a vote in the House and send it to the Democrat-controlled Senate. In the arena of public perception, the Democrats would lose on this issue.
Debt Crisis- Once again, Senator Marco Rubio put this entire issue into perspective when he said in an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, "The debt limit is a symptom. It's not our problem. The core problem is our debt and the fact that our government borrows 40¢ out of every dollar and has no idea how it's gonna pay it back; and that's a combination of spending -- we just spend way too much as government -- and loss of revenues."
Again, not loss of revenues 'cause our taxes aren't high enough. Loss of revenues because we have too many people that are out of work that are not paying taxes. So the solution seems to me to be a combination of fiscal discipline on the spending side -- which you have to enforce through spending caps and a Balanced Budget Amendment and cuts starting right now -- and, at the same time, some sort of pro-growth measures that get people back at work that create not new taxes but new taxpayers: People that are working, paying their taxes, adding revenue to government so that government can use that revenue not to grow government, but to pay down the debt and put us on a sustainable path.
Rubio went on to concisely state the fallacy in the Democrats’ insistence on tax increases by saying “That just seems to me to be the commonsense approach to this, and, instead, we've got this President's obsession with raising taxes -- and what bothers me the most about it is not just that it will kill jobs and is bad for our economy. What bothers me the most is there isn't a single tax package out there that's reasonable and realistic that would even put a dent on this debt crisis. I mean, people have no idea what you'd have to raise in taxes in this country to just to begin to make a difference. Of course you never can raise it to that level because you won't be able to collect them because, you know, people aren't dumb enough to work for free. I mean, if you're gonna tax all their money, they're not gonna keep working. So these are the things I just don't get and I wish we had done a better job earlier of outlining these choices to the American people.”
This is why Senator Rubio is one of our favorite senators – he has a refreshing way of taking complex issues and making them understandable to the average American. He is also one of the few politicians in Washington, DC that will cut right to the heart of an issue and address it without the typical Washington diplomacy.
Atlanta Teacher Scandal- Every public debate on the state of our public educational system invariably ends with more spending as the solution. In Atlanta this past week, we were reminded how simply throwing money at a problem is not the answer. A report released by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal named teachers and principals in Atlanta's public schools who had been modifying tests and tampering with answers to improve results. The report found cheating in 44 of the 56 schools its authors examined, and 178 teachers and principals who cheated. This is now being called the nation’s largest cheating scandal.
Teachers in Atlanta have a monetary incentive tied to high test scores, so rather than improving scores the old fashioned way – teaching, these teachers decided to earn bonuses the quick and easy way – cheating.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported in June that the state investigation showed every level, from teachers to the Superintendent, Beverly Hall was complicit in this cheating scandal. Teachers and principals erased and changed answers on students’ answer sheets, while area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.
Ironically, Beverly Hall was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009. After the investigation’s findings were released, Hall announced she would step down. One of the more troubling findings of the Atlanta Public Schools investigation was that Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn. And like all good Liberals, Hall brought the issue of race into the fold.
Without major reforms to our nation's public school systems, cheating may be the only way for the United States to close the education gap with the sixteen nations currently ranked higher than the U.S.
China Coal Dampers Global Warming- China's soaring coal consumption in the last decade held back global warming as sulfur emissions served as a coolant, according to a study that takes head-on a key argument of climate skeptics.
Skeptics have charged that an absence of a steady rise from 1998 to 2008 disproves the view that people are heating up the planet through greenhouse gas emissions.
With mounting evidence threatening to shine a brighter light on the Global Warming alarmists, they quickly mobilized to concoct a study which shows China’s coal-burning surge over the last decade has spewed a blanket of sulfur into the atmosphere, causing a cooling effect on the Earth.
This shows just how far the climate alarmists are willing to go in order to keep the federal grant spigot flowing. Coal has been arguably the alarmists’ number one target, attributing the increase in so-called greenhouse gases mainly to “dirty” coal burning. President Obama, an alarmist himself, declared an all-out war on coal-fueled energy in the U.S.
This study is likely as bogus as many other studies which support man-made climate change. However, since it was climate alarmists who conducted the study, we should demand President Obama end his war on coal in the name of Global Warming.
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