www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm8MowatIGw

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anyone anything without first first taking it from someone else.

When half of the people get the idea that they don’t have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.”

Adrian Pierce Rogers (Sep 12, 1931 – Nov 15, 2005)
American pastor, conservative, author and a three-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1979-1980 and 1986-1988).

Kind of sums it up pretty clearly, doesn’t it?

I just finished up calculating our taxes. Both me and my wife work full-time. My wife works on-staff at a church “full-time” (which, in church lingo means about 80 hrs a week), and I have my own business designing and building websites, logos, print material, etc, as well as travel for music and lead worship for various events (which in self-employed lingo means about 24/7).
see the 7Places banner in the sidebar —>

We both accept and feel the responsibility to pay for our own house, pay our own bills, feed our kids, put gas in our vehicles, etc. Because I have my own business, I get hit with seemingly massive taxes. Now, we have enough deductions and expenses that we’re not going to have to declare bankruptcy to pay our tax burden, but we still have the responsibility to pay thousand(s) in taxes.

Now, contrast this with another couple i know … let’s call them Couple X. Couple X seems to barely work (if at all) and any work gained seems to be paid under-the-table. They receive welfare checks. They receive food assistance, etc. You get the picture. They calculate their “taxes” and magically they receive a check for thousands!

What?!?!?! You want to talk about injustices?!?! How the hell does that happen? I, in my sense of responsibility to provide for my family, have the drive to work harder, smarter, etc … but the more money I make, the more money the government takes, just to give it away to people who don’t do jack crap!!!!!

Hell, why doesn’t the government just pair up people who work and contribute to society with people who are drains on society and have us support them directly? Oh, because it cuts congress’ greedy filters. Never mind.

What incentive does this give me to work harder, smarter, better? Why don’t we just sit on our asses and let the government give us free money … well, not really free money … but money from someone else who has the sense of responsibility to provide and be productive to society?

SECONDARY RELATED RANT
I could go on and on about the upside down thinking of the liberals. Liberals think that “the man” (big corporations) is evil because they have a lot of money, and that their money should be distributed among poor people to “distribute the wealth.”

Let me ask you, when was the last time you saw a poor person employ someone? If you want to lower unemployment … give big corporations tax breaks. You don’t need to take more money from them. They (like me) are in business to make money. It’s very simple, if you increase their tax burden, they will look for ways to maintain their profits:

• reduce quality in materials
• increase costs
• fire employees

And if this is true, then the opposite has to be true as well. If you reduce their tax burden (so that there is more available money in the business), then businesses will look for more ways to invest their profits:

• increase quality in materials
• decrease costs (maybe maybe not – supply/demand will drive this)
• hire employees

But we have morons in control, making decisions at the government level thinking the answer is take more money so the government can control where it gets sent … and BINGO … that’s the key. Read that again – so the government can control. We have elected leaders who have perverted the idea of our Constitutional Republic to the point where our original intent of our country’s founding is no longer recognized in leadership.

OK, I could go on and on, but I’ll have to save that for another time. And this is all based on factual information – just wait until I break out some of my conspiratorial theories … that are coming true – don’t miss it.

RELATED STORY

Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax

Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

Most people still are required to file returns by the April 15 deadline. The penalty for skipping it is limited to the amount of taxes owed, but it’s still almost always better to file: That’s the only way to get a refund of all the income taxes withheld by employers.

In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

Tax cuts enacted in the past decade have been generous to wealthy taxpayers, too, making them a target for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year.

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

The vast majority of people who escape federal income taxes still pay other taxes, including federal payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and excise taxes on gasoline, aviation, alcohol and cigarettes. Many also pay state or local taxes on sales, income and property.

That helps explain the country’s aversion to taxes, said Clint Stretch, a tax policy expert Deloitte Tax. He said many people simply look at the difference between their gross pay and their take-home pay and blame the government for the disparity.

“It’s not uncommon for people to think that their Social Security taxes, their 401(k) contributions, their share of employer health premiums, all of that stuff in their mind gets lumped into income taxes,” Stretch said.

The federal income tax is the government’s largest source of revenue, raising more than $900 billion — or a little less than half of all government receipts — in the budget year that ended last Sept. 30. But with deductions and credits, especially for families with children, there have long been people who don’t pay it, mainly lower-income families.

The number of households that don’t pay federal income taxes increased substantially in 2008, when the poor economy reduced incomes and Congress cut taxes in an attempt to help recovery.

In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law providing most families with rebate checks of $300 to $1,200. Last year, Obama signed the economic recovery law that expanded some tax credits and created others. Most targeted low- and middle-income families.

Obama’s Making Work Pay credit provides as much as $800 to couples and $400 to individuals. The expanded child tax credit provides $1,000 for each child under 17. The Earned Income Tax Credit provides up to $5,657 to low-income families with at least three children.

There are also tax credits for college expenses, buying a new home and upgrading an existing home with energy-efficient doors, windows, furnaces and other appliances. Many of the credits are refundable, meaning if the credits exceed the amount of income taxes owed, the taxpayer gets a payment from the government for the difference.

“All these things are ways the government says, if you do this, we’ll reduce your tax bill by some amount,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

The government could provide the same benefits through spending programs, with the same effect on the federal budget, Williams said. But it sounds better for politicians to say they cut taxes rather than they started a new spending program, he added.

Obama has pushed tax cuts for low- and middle-income families and tax increases for the wealthy, arguing that wealthier taxpayers fared well in the past decade, so it’s time to pay up. The nation’s wealthiest taxpayers did get big tax breaks under Bush, with the top marginal tax rate reduced from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, and the second-highest rate reduced from 36 percent to 33 percent.

But income tax rates were lowered at every income level. The changes made it relatively easy for families of four making $50,000 to eliminate their income tax liability.

Here’s how they did it, according to Deloitte Tax:

The family was entitled to a standard deduction of $11,400 and four personal exemptions of $3,650 apiece, leaving a taxable income of $24,000. The federal income tax on $24,000 is $2,769.

With two children younger than 17, the family qualified for two $1,000 child tax credits. Its Making Work Pay credit was $800 because the parents were married filing jointly.

The $2,800 in credits exceeds the $2,769 in taxes, so the family makes a $31 profit from the federal income tax. That ought to take the sting out of April 15.

Well, well, well … check this crap out …
(full article)

… Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn — an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed …

… Governors in Idaho and Rhode Island are talking about such programs …

… A tentative plan in Massachusetts to use GPS chips in vehicles to charge motorists by the mile has drawn complaints from drivers who say it’s an Orwellian intrusion by government into the lives of citizens. Other motorists say it eliminates an incentive to drive more fuel-efficient cars since gas guzzlers will be taxed at the same rate as fuel sippers …

… The system would require all cars and trucks be equipped with global satellite positioning technology, a transponder, a clock and other equipment to record how many miles a vehicle was driven, whether it was driven on highways or secondary roads, and even whether it was driven during peak traffic periods or off-peak hours …

… The device would tally how much tax motorists owed depending upon their road use. Motorists would pay the amount owed when it was downloaded, probably at gas stations at first, but an alternative eventually would be needed …

(full article)

BULL-CRAP!!! Despite the major fact that it is outright Orwellian, what happens if my car gets stolen? I’m responsible for the mileage tax racked-up by that joker?

Idaho? Rhode Island? Massachusetts? Seriously? You can walk across Rhode Island. What about large land-masses like Texas, Montana, Alaska?

Should have known – LaHood is from crook-ville Illinois.

Anybody else glad that if nothing else, all the crap ads, signs and banners will go away? Seems like they’ve been campaigning for this thing for 2 years … the Dems anyway … McCain wasn’t even on the horizon as a candidate (nor Obama for that matter) 2 years ago.

If nothing else, I’m glad the campaigning is over. Whoever ends up winning this thing is going to be the man in charge, and the leader of the United States of America … and either way, we’ve got to get behind praying for this new administration.

I wonder if there was such an intense division over transition when Jefferson took over for Adams, or when Grover Cleveland took over for Benjamin Harrison who took over for Grover Cleveland, or when Taft took over for Teddy Roosevelt?

Well whether your candidate won or not – pray for wisdom, pray for strength, pray for courage, pray for discernment, pray for compassion, pray for blessing on this next administration.

Voting for Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders

Look at their actual body of work and the issues they support or reject. Take a look at transcripts of what they’ve said or done and see which candidate is more above reproach.

Or, how about take a look at what one candidate wrote in his own books (to make a profit):

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa , that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.’

And the most disturbing of them all:

From Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’

Ask yourself why you haven’t heard this being discussed in the major news networks. Ask yourself how in the world we’ve gotten this far along in an election with a nominee and there is still SO much left undisclosed to the American public.

My vote is going to the McCain-Palin ticket. Where is yours?

Here is an interview with Phil J. Berg (note – he’s a Democrat … not some wako Republican conspiracy theorist). Mr. Berg is currently involved in a lawsuit against Barry challenging Barry to produce the proper documents to prove Barry is a natural-born citizen as required by our Constitution.

[video]