US Tax Freedom Day Clock 2011 Released

Yesterday, the Tax Foundation announced the date for Tax Freedom Day for 2011 and ActionAmerica.org updated their popular Tax Freedom Clocks, accordingly.

Based upon government reported tax and income data for all states in the USA, the Tax Foundation has determined that in 2011, the average US taxpayer will have to work till April 12, in order to earn enough to pay his taxes for the year. That's more than a quarter of the year. The state Tax Freedom Days vary from March 26 in low-tax Mississippi to May 2, in high-tax Connecticut.

Since the Tax Freedom Day Clocks tick in seconds, ActionAmerica.org has taken the data provided by the Tax Foundation and re-calculated Tax Freedom down to the second. So the exact moment of Tax Freedom in the USA is April 12, at 12:46:05 AM. That's the base time used by the Tax Freedom Clocks.

The US Tax Freedom Clocks are available as both a Flash web widget and as a Macintosh Dashboard widget. They count down the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds till US Tax Freedom and then count up the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds since Americans began earning their own money.

The purpose of these clocks is to keep Tax Freedom Day and the issues of our enormously excessive taxes, that Tax Freedom Day exposes, before the public year-around, rather than just for a month or so, near Tax Freedom Day.

ActionAmerica encourages you to visit the Tax Freedom Clock web page on our site, so you can copy the embed code and include it on the various blogs, forums and social networking sites that you visit. Let's keep this in front of the public all year.

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...

Expect More Liberal Judges Under McCain Than Clinton

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.

Action America Analyzes IRS Collections by Income Category (Percentile) for Tax Year 2005

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.

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.

Ultimate Tax Reform Poll - Flat Tax, Fair Tax or ????

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.shtml

We 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.

Tax Reform Poll

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

 

Action America Analyzes IRS Collections by Income Category (Percentile) for Tax Year 2004

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.

Clueless at Department of Homeland Security

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.

Google Deserves Our Support (Surprisingly)

In a surprising turn of events, Google is standing up to US federal snoops, who have attempted to subpoena a huge amount of RANDOM data about Google searches, in what is clearly a government fishing expedition, surrounding a civil suit over the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA). We commend Google for taking this position in defense of our 4th Amendment rights, even if that is not their intention. At the same time, we wish that Google would take the same strong stance in support of the Chinese people, against the demands upon Google by the totalitarian Communist Chinese government.

Google has made a very strong case for why the subpoena would not only violate the privacy of its millions of users, but would harm Google, in the marketplace.

As one who has a strong background in IT security, I can attest, without any doubt that considering the huge amount of RANDOM data that Dubya's snoops are demanding from Google, there is absolutely no way that Google could "sanitize" it of all personally identifiable data, as the DoJ suggests they might do. In fact, the search terms that a person uses can often tell a lot about the person. With enough data (such as is being demanded by Dubya's snoops) and a good data mining program, it should not be hard to personally identify thousands of individuals. Then consider that even though this subpoena is based upon a civil case, there is no law that would prevent the DoJ from sharing the information that they develop with the criminal division, on cases that have no relationship to the COPA. Since the data comes from nothing but searches, suspicion can be easily cast upon people who are totally innocent of any crime.

For example, in my own writing, I often research the opposition and as a counter point, even quote from sources that are diametrically opposed to the position about which I am writing. For example, I can't count how many times I have searched for the term "karl marx" or "manifesto", in my research. That doesn't make me a communist sympathizer. But, to a data mining program, it would do exactly that. There are a hundred other words that I routinely use in my research that might flag me as any number of other types of low-lifes.

Once that data is in the hands of the government, there is no telling how many innocent people may suddenly find themselves on a no-fly list, because of a series of innocent searches that they did just one time. James Madison expressed very well, one of the major problems with the DoJ subpoena, when he said, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." This is just one more, in a long string of deliberate, gradual encroachments, by the current administration that demonstrate all too clearly, just how little regard Dubya has for our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

There is also the issue of proprietary data. In fact, Google has always closely guarded how many requests they are able to process in a given period, as well as what their most common search terms are, among other trade secrets. If Google were to be forced to supply that data to the government, then the defense in that case would have to have access to that data, too. Once that data gets out, it would be very easy to determine all kinds of information from it that competitors could use to make their search engines more efficient and become more competitive with Google. The government could very easily take the leading search engine company and turn it into just another of the pack, if this subpoena is upheld.

For a number of reasons, I am not a big fan of Google's business tactics (though I like their technology). But in this case, I must heartily applaud them. After all, we must protect our own rights, here at home, if we are to be able to have any effect on securing the rights of others, such as the people of Communist China, for whom it seems, Google could care less. I support the concept of COPA, but we must remember that just using a good concept to justify a bad thing, does not make the bad thing any less bad. In fact, if anything, it casts a cloud over the good concept, for its supporter's attempt to justify something bad.

Because of the severe damage that Dubya and his snoops have already done to the Constitution and in particular, the 4th Amendment, in the false name of fighting terrorism, we should all hope that the court comes down hard on the DoJ and makes it clear that any such fishing expeditions will not be tolerated. It's time that the court tells Dubya that enough is enough, before there is nothing left of the 4th Amendment to salvage.

Some may think that it is OK to violate the rights of certain individuals, if the cause is good. But, keep in mind that if we allow it once, then we have set a precedent that by the simple circumstance of a change in administration, may soon be used against you, in ways that you never dreamed.

Let's give two cheers for Google. We can hold that third cheer for when Google stands up to Communist China or pulls completely out of that country. But, at least Google is fighting the good fight here in the USA.

BAH! HUMBUG!

It seems that you can no longer win, for losing. Some people get offended when you say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings". Others get offended when you say "Merry Christmas".

Therefore, I have decided not to discriminate and to be an equal opportunity offender, with a greeting intended to offend everyone equally.

"BAH! HUMBUG!"

8^)

Citizenship Reform Torpedoes Immigration Bill

Congress is at it again, using a fine, much needed bill, to obscure foul legislation that is designed to further subvert the rights of US citizens. I'm talking about three of the four sections of Title VII (Citizenship Reform) of the "Enforcement First Immigration Reform Act of 2005".

Using the guise of patriotism, those sections seek to deny to naturalized US citizens, the right to dual citizenship (that is still allowed to natural born citizens). Let's skip for a moment, the fact that this creates second class citizens and look at just who it targets.

It doesn't target illegal aliens or visitors who have over-stayed their visas, both of whom could likely represent a real threat to our security. It doesn't target permanent residents, who are not likely to pose a threat. It targets people who have come here LEGALLY and gone through the entire rigorous process of naturalization, to LEGALLY become a US citizen. These people are not the problem!

Furthermore, such onerous legislation would create what would essentially be a "Second Class Citizen". As a result, such legislation could not possibly stand up in court. This begs the question, that if it's so obvious that it couldn't stand up to judicial scrutiny, why would any congressman even try to get it passed, if he knew that it would be tossed out by the court, at their first opportunity? The answer can be given in only one word - "incrementalism".

Contrary to what the wording of this proposed legislation would indicate, it cannot possibly be aimed at just naturalized citizens. More likely, it's a red herring, that is meant only to establish precedence, so when the law is eventually tossed out, Congress will use that precedent as an excuse to rewrite that law, to that it applies to all US citizens.

Unfortunately, there are some very adverse economic consequences that would follow such legislation. The result would mean higher taxes for the rest of Americans.

[Read more. Then contact your congressman.]

The Conspiracy Against the Taxpayers

We were recently alerted to this excellent article about how liberal special interests have been effectively conspiring against taxpayers for many years and are running up state and local government deficits. Here are just a few of the things that this article points out.

"Public-employee unions have so successfully used their political muscle that whereas public-sector compensation once lagged the private sector, now the reverse is true. Astonishingly, the average state and local government employee now collects 46 percent more in total compensation (salary plus benefits) than the average private-sector employee, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute."

"Unions have also convinced Americans that teachers are underpaid, when they now take home considerably better pay packages on average than professional workers in the private sector. The federal government’s national compensation survey estimates that local public school districts pay teachers an average of $47.97 per hour in total compensation, including $12.39 per hour in benefits—figures that far outstrip not only what private school teachers earn, but also the average of what all professional workers earn in private business, a category that includes engineers, architects, computer scientists, lawyers, and journalists."

"Equally rapacious are the nominally private social-services and health-care providers who have found a way of diverting some of the torrent of government dollars to their own pockets. With so much money available from Medicaid, one of the original War on Poverty programs, health care has become an increasingly government-financed business and has been transformed unrecognizably in the process...

...According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, two-thirds of Medicaid services that states now provide are optional under federal guidelines—from free ambulette rides to doctors’ offices to dental and podiatry services. From 1994 to 2000, when U.S. poverty rates were plunging, spending on Medicaid, originally a program for the poor, grew by 30 percent after accounting for inflation, an American Enterprise Institute study shows."

More...
 

The Economy Bomb - Ticking Down Faster (2005)

It's that time of year again. The IRS has published another year's worth of collections data and Action America has updated our annual feature article, The Economy Bomb - Ticking Down Faster, dealing with, among other things, the effects of our tax system on the movement of wealth.

Besides the new IRS collections data, there are a lot of other issues addressed in that article. Among the new information available in this year's installment of Economy Bomb, is data that we have compiled from the Forbes Magazine lists of the 400 Wealthiest Americans and the World's Billionaires. Since 1999, the number of billionaires in the US has grown at a rate that is just slightly larger than can be explained by inflation, while the number of billionaires worldwide has grown at a rate six times greater (22% vs. 132%).

That's just one of many pieces of coroborating information that indicates a rather sizable movement of wealth and the wealthy out of the US. Check out the article, to find out more about the consequences of this shift. Then come back here to discuss it.

Action America Analyzes New IRS Collections Data

The official IRS Collections Data for 2003 has just become available and Action America has published our annual analysis of that data in an article titled 1985-2003 IRS Collections Data by Income Category

Here is just a sample of what's in that report.

• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers earned 16.77% of the income.
• The top-earning 1% of taxpayers paid 34.27% of the tax collected.
• That's more than double their share, based upon income.

If nothing else, this report shows that the Bush tax cuts didn't benefit the rich, as liberals would have us believe. In fact, 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. So in fact, the top earners paid a larger percentage of the taxes that were actually collected in the two years after the Bush tax cuts, than in the years leading up to those tax cuts.

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 October and February, the IRS releases their most recent collections data. Because of the time it takes to complete collections and to compile the data, the released data is always about two years old.

Miers fails the acid test

Although many people suggest that Dubya's nomination of Harriet Miers represents an unknown quantity, to replace Justice O'Connor, we at Action America heartily disagree. While there are many qualifications that can be argued for a nominee to the Supreme Court, there is one disqualification that cannot be argued. It is sort of an "acid test" for any Supreme Court nominee and Miers clearly fails that test. That test can easily be expressed in one question and it is a question to which we already know the answer.

"Do you believe that the Constitution of the United States of America is and should be the supreme law of the land, subservient to NO outside law, precedent or legal trends?"

That's a pretty simple question that most people would think a Supreme Court nominee could answer only one way. "YES."

In fact, in 1998, when Miers was chairman of the Select Committee of the House of delegates of the American Bar Association, she supported the creation of the not-to-be-sufficiently-damned International Criminal Court (ICC) which, if recognized by the Supreme Court, would effectively make international law superior to our own Constitution, within our own borders. Supreme Court justices are sworn to uphold the Constitution, as the supreme law of the land. Yet, Miers believes that we need the ICC, which would, by definition, take precedence over our own laws.

Six Supreme Court justices have already cited foreign law, international law, international precedent or international legal trends in their written opinions, from the bench. One of those justices was just replaced by Justice Roberts. The retiring Justice O'Connor is another. The last thing that the Supreme Court needs is to replace her with yet another justice, who believes that foreign law should be superior to our Constitution, within our own borders.

Stacking the Court with such ideologues would lead the way to gun bans like those in England and other countries that now suffer increasing violent crime, as a result of the disarming of the public. It would lead to the forced recognition of homosexual marriage and requiring that vitamins become a controlled substance, as they are in many other countries, today. We would see significant loss of private property rights and individual privacy. Those are just a few of the targets of the ICC. In the end, we could kiss the entire Bill of Rights and most of the Constitution goodbye.

How would you like to have to abide by the laws of socialist countries like France and Germany. What about the laws of Botswana or Libya? By recognizing international trends and precedent, in their rulings, the Supreme Court could, in effect, circumvent the President and Congress, making official recognition of the ICC a moot point, as our own Supreme Court would be doing the will of that reprehensible body, in violation of our own Constitution and the will of the American people.

There are very few times that a single issue should be the deciding factor in an election or nomination. But in this case, the single issue is the Constitution of the United States of America and the individual is a nominee to the Supreme Court, whose primary job is to protect and uphold that Constitution. That single issue is not just an issue, but the whole set of issues, rolled into one. A nominee who thinks that any foreign law should be superior to our Constitution, should not be allowed to sit on any court in the US, even traffic court.

During his confirmation hearing, John Roberts said it best when characterizing the cherry-picking of foreign law to interpret the United States Constitution, as "a misuse of precedent." Miers is clearly on the opposite side of that position.

We must contact our US senators and demand that they oppose Miers' nomination. Republican senators, in particular, should be called upon to encourage Dubya to withdraw Miers' nomination. Such a person must not, under any circumstance, be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Note: On the same subject, I encourage you to support the "Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution" (H. Res. 97). Go to:

http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=8078481&type=CO