As most educated voters know, one of the most important issues in any presidential race has to do with the kind of judges each candidate will nominate. However, during the upcoming election, we have to adjust our thinking, on this issue.
There is no doubt that all of the candidates left in the presidential race will nominate liberal judges. Even supporters of John McCain cannot deny this. After all, McCain was one of the founders of the "Gang of Fourteen," which was created for the specific purpose of blocking Bush's conservative judges. Furthermore, more than a few well respected people have reported that John McCain called Judge Alito, "too conservative." That leaves no question as to what kind of judges will be nominated by John McCain. They will be just as liberal as those who might be nominated by either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama.
Therefore, since Clinton, Obama and McCain will all nominate liberal judges, we have to look beyond simply, who they will nominate. We must ask another more specific question.
Which candidate will be able to get the most of his/her liberal judges CONFIRMED?Read entire article
here.
It's that time of year again. The official IRS Collections Data for 2005 has just become available and Action America has published our annual analysis of that data in an article titled
"1986-2005 IRS Collections Data by Income Category (Percentile)."Interestingly, as in previous years, the latest IRS data shatters the popular myth that there are so many loopholes in the tax code that the rich don't pay tax. In fact, as past years' data has shown, the latest IRS Collections data, broken down by income category or "percentile", conclusively dispels that myth. In fact, this data leaves no doubt that the rich pay far more than their share.
Here is just a sample of what's in this year's tax collections data.
• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers
earned 21% of the income.
• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers
paid 40% of taxes collected.
• That's roughly
double their share, based upon income.
Once again, this report shows that the Bush tax cuts
didn't benefit the rich, as liberals would have us believe. In fact, the most relevant benchmark of tax load - the ratio of percent of total income earned, to the percent of total tax paid, by each income group - has been
higher for the top-earning 1% of income earners, in each of the years 2001 through 2004, than in any of the prior four years, when that ratio was trending down. Only in 2005 has that ratio dropped to close to the level that it was when Bush took office. Interestingly, the years 2002 and 2003 were the first years since 1996 that the top-earning 1% paid
more than double their share of taxes, based upon income. Try to spin that as the media may, such data demonstrates, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that if anything, the Bush tax cuts actually hurt, rather than helped the richest taxpayers.
But there is a lot more to it than just that. Check out the
article for more analysis and a link to the actual data, in spreadsheet format, on the IRS web site. Afterwards, come back here and discuss it.
[more...]Note: Every year, between September and February, the IRS releases their most recent collections data, sorted by income category or "percentile". Because of the time it takes to complete collections and to compile the data, the released data is always about two years old.
Labels: collections, irs, rich, richest, tax data, wealthiest
Apple still doesn't get it
Ok. This is a little off topic for this site. But, as a person who bought an iPhone on the day it was released and took it back four days later, I think that it is important that our readers don't get sucked up into all the iPhone hype.
Although Apple has sold over one million iPhones, Apple still doesn't get it. They could have sold over 5 million iPhones by now, if they weren't so greedy. It's the same warped "keep it proprietary" philosophy that has kept the Mac a poor second for decades, even though it sports far superior technology.
In response to huge numbers of requests and hundreds of negative media reviews, Steve Jobs recently announced that the iPhone will now support downloadable ringtones.
NOT! Well, in a warped Steve Jobs kind of way, it will support something that vaguely resembles what ringtones might have been years ago. But, in no way does the iPhone offer true user-choice downloadable ringtones, with the ease, flexibility and economy (that means FREE) that cell phone users have come to expect of even the cheapest, bargain basement cell phones, not to mention the many modern and far more practical smartphones on the market today.
You can only make iPhone ringtones from music that you purchase from the iTunes Store and for which, you already paid $0.99. Even so, Apple wants to charge you an additional $0.99 for a ringtone made from that already purchased music. Hello?!!! What's wrong with this picture? Worse yet, not all songs on the iTunes Store are allowed to be turned into ringtones. Only
certain Apple-approved songs can be made into ringtones. You can't even make ringtones out of music that you have on an old CD, that is not available on the iTunes Store. At least six of my ringtones on my old cell phone fall into that category. So to recap, Apple wants you to pay $0.99 for a song and then, only if they approve of that song, pay an additional $0.99 for a 15 to 20 second clip of that song, to be used as a ringtone and ignore the fact that on your previous phone, you could download
ANY ringtone from
ANY music source that you
already own and the ringtone service provided by
PhoneZoo.com.
In short, Apple's idea of downloadable ringtones is far more restrictive and infinitely more expensive than what is available for almost all other cell phones, meaning that the iPhone still doesn't have downloadable ringtones that can be considered even close to modern.
Note to Steve Jobs: There are certain things that I expect from any cell phone. It's sort of like expecting a car to have brakes, headlights and a horn. For that reason, I will not buy any cell phone, no matter how glitzy, if it does not have true
downloadable ringtone functionality, support
voice dialing and
cut and paste. I will not buy any music player, no matter how glitzy, if it does not support
A2DP Bluetooth stereo. Other features of which I expect to see most, on any smartphone are, expandable memory, Java support, video recording, a user replaceable battery, instant messaging support and an API (application program interface) and SDK (software developer kit), so 3rd parties can develop specialized applications for the phone, as they have long done on the Blackberry, the Treo and the Nokia, to name just a few. None of those features are available on the iPhone. It would also be nice if you were to add GPS and fix that headphone jack that won't fit my high-end noise-reduction headphones that cost almost as much as the iPhone. So in short, Steve, the iPhone has a long way to go, before I will even think about buying another one (I took the first one back on July 3rd). I also recommend that our readers consider these things, as well. I look forward to a version 2 of the iPhone that has more than just some glitzy features and actually includes the most used features that we have all come to expect of any cell phone.
Labels: iPhone, java, ringtones, stereo, Steve Jobs, voice dial
ActionAmerica.org has announced our new tax reform poll that we call the
Ultimate Tax Reform Poll. We call it "Ultimate", because of what it includes that every other tax reform poll of which we are aware, does not include.
A few of weeks ago, as we were discussing the order of the options that were to appear in our soon to be released, tax reform poll, pitting the
Flat Tax and
Fair Tax against each other, I got to thinking about all of the site feedback that we receive from our readers, who have a variety of tax reform ideas. I realized that it would be disingenuous to post a poll that only included the
Flat Tax and the
Fair Tax as options, unless we had some fairly good reason to believe that those were the only options that really had any kind of public support. We didn't want our poll to be a "push poll."
So, for the first half of January of this year, ActionAmerica has been running a very broad based tax reform poll. We included every type of tax reform option that we could think of, from the
Flat Tax and the
Fair Tax, to unlikely candidates such as the VAT Tax and Duties and Excise Taxes. We even included an option for the strict Libertarians, who think that all tax should be voluntary. Our purpose was to either prove what we thought to be true - that the
Flat Tax and the
Fair Tax were the only tax reform proposals that had any legs with the public - or to find out if there were any other proposals that might have any significant amount of public support.
Well, much to our surprise, we discovered that there was a third tax reform proposal that had far more than trivial public support. In fact, it essentially tied the
Flat Tax for second place in that earlier poll, coming in only one vote behind the
Flat Tax and it had actually led the
Flat Tax for much of the previous 24 hours. Because of this surprising development, we are including three options in our Ultimate Tax Reform Poll - the
Flat Tax, the
Fair Tax and
Taxing the States, by apportionment (and allowing each state to collect taxes within their own borders, as they see fit, to pay the federal tax bill).
That earlier poll was more like the general election, with lots of candidates. The current poll is more like the run-off. We culled out the non-starters, with that first poll and in the process, we learned that more than a few people support an option that has not been considered in any other poll, to our knowledge. The new poll asks our visitors to now choose between just those three options that got out of the starting gate.
Take a moment to tell us what kind of tax reform you think will help all Americans. Cast your vote now, at:
http://www.ActionAmerica.org/taxreformpoll.shtmlWe further encourage you to pass the word about this poll, to conservative and liberal forums and news groups and to Flat Tax and Fair Tax forums and newsgroups. Tell everyone. I know that it's tempting to tell just those who agree with you and get supporters of your view to spam the poll. But, we want supporters of all viewpoints to spam the poll. In other words, we want to give everyone a chance, so our results will be more meaningful.
Vote Now.
As the new Congress prepares for their next session, one of the items on their agenda, will be tax reform. We ask our readers:
"What kind of tax reform will serve all Americans best?"
This poll is intentionally designed to give a broad set of options, so we may see what people are really thinking, rather than limiting the options to only a few popular plans. In a few more weeks, we will post a poll that limits the options to only those options that ranked high on this poll. But for now, we just want to know what you would do, if you were in charge.
Vote now, by going to http://www.ActionAmerica.org/taxpoll.shtml
The official IRS Collections Data for 2004 has just become available and Action America has published our annual analysis of that data in an article titled
"1986-2004 IRS Collections Data by Income Category (Percentile)."Interestingly, as in previous years, the latest IRS data shatters the popular illusion that there are so many loopholes in the tax code that the rich don't pay tax In fact, the latest IRS Collections data, broken down by income category or "percentile", conclusively dispels the popular myth that the rich don't pay tax.
Here is just a sample of what's in that data.
• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers
earned 19.0% of the income.
• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers
paid 36.89% of taxes collected.
• That's roughly
double their share, based upon income.
Furthermore, this report shows that the Bush tax cuts didn't benefit the rich, as liberals would have us believe. In fact, the most relevant benchmark of tax load - the ratio of percent of total income earned, to the percent of total tax paid - by the top-earning 1% of income earners, has been
higher in each of the years 2001 through 2004, than in any of the prior four years, when that ratio was trending down. Interestingly, the years 2002 and 2003 were the first years since 1996 that the top-earning 1% paid more than double their share of taxes, based upon income. Try to spin that as the media may, such data demonstrates, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that if anything, the Bush tax cuts actually hurt, rather than helped the richest taxpayers.
But there is a lot more to it than just that. Check out the article for more analysis and a link to the actual data, in spreadsheet format, on the IRS web site. Afterwards, come back here and discuss it.
Note: Every year, between September and February, the IRS releases their most recent collections data, sorted by income category or "percentile". Because of the time it takes to complete collections and to compile the data, the released data is always about two years old.
Larry Pratt, Executive Director of
Gun Owners of America, points out that refusal to profile has led to Washington bureaucrats and policy makers tending to view the entire population as suspected terrorists. Further, he points out that the definition of "terrorism", at the Department of "Homeland
Security Subjugation" sets up a
preference for genocide over self defense! I'm not kidding! It does!
We have often been criticized by the
"my party, right or wrong" Republicans, for our continuous criticisms of Dubya's "Homeland Subjugation" policy, based upon its remarkable similarity to that of the Gestapo. The mantra of Dubya's minions is always,
"Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to fear". Right! And, pigs fly. This piece shows just how easily even good, law-abiding conservative Christians can get caught up in the
broad, unthinking tactics of Dubya's despotic "Homeland Subjugation" policy.
You see, the Department of "Homeland Subjugation" has determined that ANY group that is engaged in an armed struggle against a government (ANY government), as well as those who provide material support to the group,
even if the government that they are fighting is engaged in genocide, are "terrorists". That means that if you, as a concerned humanitarian, donated money to Christian Freedom International, a Virginia organization that has helped the Burmese Christian refugees, who are resisting extermination by the Rangoon government, then by "Homeland Subjugation" standards,
YOU are a "terrorist". So if you donate to such worthy causes, don't be surprised if, the next time you go to buy a new car, you have trouble getting a loan or the next time you plan a vacation, to find yourself on a "No-Fly" list, thanks to our "Big Brother", RINO president.
Read Larry Pratt's article
here.
