Gun Self Defense Counter Released

As a way to remind people that guns save lives of innocent people 60 times more often that guns are used to take a life, ActionAmerica.org has created the Gun Self-Defense Counter, as a live Flash-based web widget. By "live", I mean that all of the counters continue to count, as long as the web page is open.

We have long offered a version of the Gun Self-Defense Counter as a Macintosh Dashboard widget and since the release of that widget, we have received many requests to release it in a format that can be used on web pages and blogs and by those who suffer under the limitations of Windoze. The delay was partially my own procrastination.

To make up for the delay, the web version of the widget temporarily has a few more features than the Macintosh version(until we have time to update the Mac version). The Mac version only counts Gun Self-Defense uses. The Web version counts gun accidents, gun homicides and gun suicides, as well. Then, for comparison, it counts deaths from falling. Finally, it counts the number of times that guns have been used in self-defense.

Post it Everywhere!

ActionAmerica.org invites you to embed this clock on your own web sites and blog posts, in order to remind folks that guns save lives much more often than they are used to take a life. Place it on any of your posts to forums or social networks that allow embed code. It's real easy. Simply go to the Gun Self-Defense Counter Web Widget page and copy the single line of embed code that you find there and paste it into the HTML of any site that allows embed code. Place it anywhere and everywhere that you can.

Let's keep reminding everyone that, as a net result, guns save lives.

Tax Tyranny Clock Released

To condemn 100 Years of Tax Tyranny and to help others inveigh against that 100 Years of Tax Tyranny, ActionAmerica.org has created the Tax Tyranny Clock, which is a live clock that continuously counts down the time to the 100th anniversary of the day the legislation that created the 16th Amendment was passed.

Almost 100 years ago, on July 12, 1909, Congress passed the legislation that was sent to the states for ratification, to become the infamous 16th Amendment. We are proud to join ZapTheIRS.com and others, in calling for a national day of mourning on July 12, 2009, to lament 100 years of Tax Tyranny. The Tax Tyranny Clock continuously counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to that infamous date. After that date, it simply announces "100 Years Plus".



Post it Everywhere!

ActionAmerica.org invites you to embed this clock on your own web sites and blog posts, in order to call attention to this dark centennial. Place it on any of your posts to forums or social networks that allow embed code. It's real easy. Simply go to the Tax Tyranny Clock page and copy the single line of embed code and paste it into the HTML of any site that allows embed code. Place it anywhere and everywhere that you can. Let's make this day of mourning a major event.

ActionAmerica.org will host this widget until at least August 12, 2009; one month after that day of infamy.

Tax Freedom Day is Finally Here

Tax Freedom Day for 2009 has finally arrived!


Congratulations! You are no longer a slave... at least not until next year.

As of 10:19PM April 13, you are no longer a slave. You are no longer working for the government. You are free to earn your own money... at least until next year.

Tax Freedom Day is the day on which the average US taxpayer has worked long enough to pay all of his taxes for the year. In actuality, Tax Freedom Day for each state is different and even different people, depending upon how their finances are structured, have different Tax Freedom Days.

In fact, when you consider that that 1.4 million taxpayers pay 40% of all income tax and a similarly large share of other taxes, you might think that Tax Freedom Day is heavily skewed toward the rich and therefore pushed later in the year than it would be for the average middle class American. But, nothing could be further from the truth.

That's partially because, while the richest taxpayers (1.4 million taxpayers) do pay 40% of US taxes, those same rich taxpayers earn 22% of US income. So, it isn't as bad as it first sounds. Then add into the mix, the fact that about 120 million US adults pay no US income tax, whatsoever and not enough other taxes to be significant, and an entirely different picture begins to take shape. You see, it turns out that the 120 million who pay no tax pretty much offsets the 1.4 million, who pay more than their share.

In the end, it all boils down to the fact that Tax Freedom Day probably does come pretty close to representing the average middle class American's tax bite. In other words, most middle class American taxpayers work more than a quarter of the year, for which they effectively do not get paid. Or to put it a little more bluntly, for more than a quarter of each year, you are a slave.

Well, what else can you call it? Like slaves of earlier times, neither do you have a choice, nor do you get paid. The only difference is that the new slave-masters don't take the benefit of ALL of your labors --- yet.

But the question that you should be asking yourself is, "Are the services that I receive from the government worth more than a quarter of my labor and couldn't private business supply most of those services to me at a higher quality and lower cost?" Think about it...

Watch the ActionAmerica.org Tax Freedom Day Clock, as it tracks the time that the government has allowed you to keep the fruits of your labor - at least till the beginning of next year. It will automatically reset each January, to start displaying the time that you must work, before the government once again grants you temporary freedom.

ActionAmerica.org also provides a freeware Tax Freedom Clock widget, for the Macintosh Dashboard.

Both Tax Freedom Day Clocks will be automatically updated, each year, to use the new date for that year, immediately after the Tax Foundation calculates and announces the new date.

Tax Freedom Day 2009 Announced

Today, the Tax Foundation announced that Tax Freedom Day 2009 will occur on April 13. This is a full eight days earlier than last year, primarily due to the fact that the recession has reduced tax collections even faster than it has reduced income and the fact that the bailouts include large temporary tax cuts for 2009 and 2010.

However, this earlier date is not good news, going forward. That's because the Tax Freedom Day calculation only considers this year's taxes and income and does not consider the sky-rocketing deficit, caused by the various bailouts. In fact, the Tax Foundation reports that the "deficit-included" date would be May 29 - by far the latest for the "deficit-included" date. This certainly does not bode well for future Tax Freedom Days, as the bill for that deficit eventually comes due.

The ActionAmerica web-based Tax Freedom Day Clock and its companion Tax Freedom Clock widget for Macintosh Dashboard have both been updated to use the newly announced date. (Note: The Tax Freedom Clock widget automatically updates its data from the web, so users need not download a new version, just to get the new date.) These are both live clocks. By that, I mean that each will continue to count down or up, second by second, as long as the web page or widget is open.

Over the years, Tax Freedom Day has become so effective at making people realize how much they pay in taxes that the "Big-Government", tax and spend folks have tried several ways to undermine it. They tried to claim that the date was exaggerated since the Tax Foundation didn't use "unrealized" capital gains in their calculations. Of course, most people didn't buy into that and the Tax Foundation educated many more on that subject. Interestingly, now that the mortgage crisis has turned many of those unrealized capital gains into unrealized capital losses, the tax and spend crowd has become curiously silent on that subject. Hmmm???

The big-government folks also try to say that Tax Freedom Day is heavily skewed later into the year than it should be, since the top 1% of income earners pay most of the tax. But that myth is easily shot down by two other facts. 1) That same top 1% of income earners (about 1.4 million taxpayers) make a disproportionally high amount of the money earned, which tends to reduce the skew. 2) Add to that the fact that more than 120 million Americans pay no federal income tax and few other taxes and any remaining skew towards the rich goes away. In fact, all things considered, Tax Freedom Day is probably fairly representative of the tax load of the average middle-class American, plus or minus a day or two either way.

Actually, the greatest skew is that between states. Low-tax Alaska's Tax Freedom Day occurs on March 23, while high-tax Connecticut's Tax Freedom Day occurs on April 30.

The question that you should be asking yourself is, "Are the services that I receive from all levels of government worth more than a quarter of my labor, each year?"

Or to put it another way, you might ask yourself, "Couldn't I provide a lot of the services that I receive from the government at a much higher quality and much lower cost, than what I am getting from the government?"

In actuality, we pay our taxes all year. But, as the Tax Foundation points out, "Tax Freedom Day is a vivid, calendar-based illustration of government’s cost, and it gives Americans an easy way to gauge the overall tax take." It gives people a way to relate to a concept that they might not otherwise comprehend and makes them realize just how high their taxes really are.

Tax Freedom Day Clock

Action America has updated its US Tax Freedom Day Clock, to continuously display the time till or since Tax Freedom Day, in months, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Our original Tax Freedom Day Clock counted only in months, hours and fractions of hours. This added detail allows visitors to actually watch the clock tick down ever so slowly towards Tax Freedom. The Tax Freedom Day Clock continues to count down (or up) for as long as the web page is open, automatically switching to displaying the time since Tax Freedom, after that time has passed. The Tax Freedom Day Clock also automatically resets every January 1, at midnight.

Action America also released the US Tax Freedom Clock Widget for Macintosh, (snapshot to left) along with this update. It functions the same as the web based Tax Freedom Day Clock. Besides resetting every January, this widget automatically fetches the new date for Tax Freedom Day from the internet, each year when that new date is announced. The widget fetches that date, once each time it is opened or displayed. If the widget is being displayed when the new Tax Freedom Day is posted, it will update itself the next time it is displayed. This eliminates the need to download a new widget every year, just to get the new date.

For the record, the 2009 Tax Freedom Day date has not yet been announced. As soon as it is announced by the Tax Foundation, we will update both the web-based clock and the widget. For now, both are using the 2008 Tax Freedom Day of April 23.

Also, having returned, within the last year, from living in London for about a year, we have also decided to release both Tax Freedom Clocks, formatted to use United Kingdom tax and income data, for all of our new friends in London and Scotland. The web-based UK Tax Freedom Day Clock and the UK Tax Freedom Clock Widget both use the UK Tax Freedom Day of June 2, as calculated by the Adam Smith Institute.

When you think about how long you have to work to pay your taxes, you have to ask yourself if the services that you get from the government are worth all of those lost days at work or if maybe you could provide some of those services for yourself, at a much higher quality and at a lower cost. Think about it...