* 6 percent said no, all the tax cuts should be allowed to expire,
* 24 percent said yes, but only for those making less than $250,000 a year,
* 70 percent said that all the tax cuts should be extended.

Despite the continued challenging conditions, 30 out of 48 economists who answered the question said the economy didn’t need any more fiscal or monetary stimulus. Six economists said more fiscal stimulus was necessary, while five want more monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve and seven said that the economy could use both.

The economists, though, generally didn’t support the idea of ending Bush-era tax cuts, which will expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts. Just three respondents said that the tax cuts on individual income should be allowed to expire for everyone. Thirty-two economists said they should all be extended, while 11 said they should be extended for people making less than $250,000 a year—the policy option backed by the Obama administration.

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LA School

LOS ANGELES – Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.

The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of “Taj Mahal” schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities.

“There’s no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the ’70s where kids felt, ‘Oh, back to jail,’” said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. “Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.”

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Cost of Government

Every year, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Center for Fiscal Accountability calculate Cost of Government Day. This is the day on which the average American has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state, and local levels.

In 2010, Cost of Government Day fell yesterday, on August 19. Today is the first day you stopped working for Uncle Sam and began working for yourself. Americans must labor 231 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government – 8 days later than last year and a full 34 days longer than 2008.

In other words, in 2010 the cost of government consumes 63.41 percent of national income.

The Cost of Government Day also details how the states fared – Alaska has the earliest Cost of Government Day this year, falling on July 28, while Connecticut taxpayers will labor until September 17 to pay for the cost of their government.


Cost of Government Day serves as a tangible reminder of the growing burden government places on taxpayers. Click here to read the entire report, which includes case studies on the various policies that have contributed to pushing this year’s Cost of Government day to August 19, 2010.

Onward,
Grover Norquist

PS- Do you have Facebook and/or Twitter? Please consider helping us promote Cost of Government Day by linking to www.costofgovernmentday.com and using the hashtag #cogd10 if you’re on Twitter!

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Work Harder, Your Government Needs You

Check out the hiring woes of Michael P. Fleischer, at Ramsey, N.J.’s Bogen Communications Inc.

Fleischer gives the case of the median-pay employee at his company. She makes $59,000 a year:

Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That’s the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She’s lucky she doesn’t live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher.

Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.

Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers’ comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally’s Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally’s job each year.

AND on top of that, the company ACTUALLY (unlike Government) has to make a profit on Sally’s labor. Or the whole point of hiring Sally is lost. If the gross margin is 40% then Sally actually has contribute around $100,000 per year for it to be worthwhile for the company to hire her. Now you know why this is a jobless recovery.

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Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ’obstructing sidewalk traffic.’

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)  They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ’Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail.  Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with terrible vermin.

(Alice Paul)  When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because — why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.) Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels.’ It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York) All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.  Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was–with herself. ‘One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,’ she said. ’What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’ HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history; social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

Conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at National Woman’s Party  headquarters, Jackson Place, Washington, D.C. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right)

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’  Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn.) Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, ‘Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

History is being made.

Submitted by Katherine Winans

Lifted from Citizens Voice

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Housing Inventory Held By Fannie and Freddie

The combined REO (Real Estate Owned) inventory for Fannie, Freddie and the FHA increased by 13% in Q2 2010 from Q1 2010.

These are homes that Freddie and Fannie owned the mortgage for and who owners couldn’t make the payments.  They revert back to Freddie and Fannie.

Remember this is just a portion of the total REO inventory. Private label securities and banks and thrifts also hold a substantial number of REOs.

What does this mean?  A lot of homes are owned by Freddie and Fannie.  And the trend is up.  We still have a lot to go to shake out the over supply in housing.

They will have to hold on to the inventory and reduce it slowly.  If they try to move the inventory and the only way they could would be by reducing the sales price, prices all over the country would drop causing more mortgage defaults as homeowners walk away from underwater mortgages.   No way this amount of inventory could be absorbed and maintain prices.

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I feel very sad. I was a Boy Scout and the lessons I learned as a Scout are with me today. They are as group very patriotic.

To hear them boo the President is an earth moving event. This is just not conceivable, the Boy Scouts do not boo the Command in Chief. This is a major cultural event, it may not be THE event that tips the bus but it certainly will be considered a major milestone in what is to come.

The President dissed the Boy Scouts on their 100th Anniversary, skipping their jamboree celebrating their 100 years, instead to go on “The View” a television show. This is also the President that left town during Memorial Day and missed the ceremony honoring America’s War Dead.

Every President since Taft has been the honorary President of the Boy Scouts, it’s safe to say no other President would even thought of skipping the Boy Scout’s big event.

But, Obama did record a message that was broadcast to the 43,000 Boy Scouts in attendance at the National Jamboree in Virginia. Yes, it’s that big, 43,000 Boy Scouts. And they Booed the President while his video ran.

You may remember the Democrats booed the Boy Scout Color Guard at their National Convention in 2000. Seems the Democrats did not like the Boy Scout’s No Gay ScoutMaster rule. So the Democrats booed the Boy Scouts and the American Flag on national TV.

A sacred bond has been broken, a line crossed, a thread in the Fabric of America has been snapped. The inconceivable has happened. It’ll not be repaired easily. It’ll not be repaired by this President.

Do you see those flags on the right arms of the scouts? Those are American Scouts.

I am very sad. This is Scout is very mad.

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The Bibb on Fire.

The attack ads Fedele is running bring you back decades ago to a failed Southern Textile Company on it’s last legs.

But let’s talk about present day Connecticut, after all that is what this race is about, today and tomorrow in Connecticut.

Fedele has been part of, and a very quiet part of an administration that has presided over a grand mass exodus of Connecticut businesses out of the state many to the South.

This was not of Fedele’s nor Rell’s making, it started long long before they came to power. And the super-majorities and past majorities of Democrats in Hartford own the lion share of the blame.

And I understand he was Lt Governor and it’s a quiet post mainly on call for when the Governor leaves the state or gets arrested. But if Fedele was quite the man of action he claims to be he could have made himself a pain in the neck in Hartford.

He could have been a lot more vocal. He could have been a leader, leaders don’t wait, they lead. Clearly Rell was not up to the task.

Rell can barely find the energy to to hold a press conference if Fedele wanted to grab the spotlight and force the glare of failure on Connecticut’s Government he could have. But he didn’t. He didn’t, now he is forcing the spotlight on Foley’s Bibb.

To hell with the Bibb! I don’t care about the Bibb, I care about UTC, GE, Goodrich, EB and I care about all of the smaller shops around the state that feed them. And there are thousands of them and when the big boys leave they will close down.

I am tired of hearing about a failed Southern Company.

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Ct Surplus Deficit, Click For Larger Image

Connecticut has the 5th biggest deficit nationally as a percentage of General Fund for 2009-2010
o NV – 30%
o AZ – 29.8%
o CA – 25.6%
o NY – 24.3%
o CT – 23.1%

Connecticut already has the highest tax burden in the country.

Connecticut’s young leave their home state at the highest rate in the country.


Connecticut is the ONLY state in the country to have fewer businesses now than 20 years ago.

Don’t you think this has to stop? If not now, when? If not by us, who?

Oh by the way, this graph is from the Ct Democrats.

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