Raising taxes on the very people he promised to help — making them even worse off — just so he give a vote-buying handout to those who need it less. Now that's "change" we can believe in!nother Ø'broken promise.
When [B. Husstalin Øbamao] promised that he wouldn't raise taxes on "anybody" but then "looks forward" to signing this [SCHIP-expansion] bill, it seems to make it official that smokers aren't "anybody." Not citizens; not persons. Here's a guy who "cut myself a little slack" for smoking because running for president was stressful who then cuts other indulgers none during the worst, most stressful economic downturn in four generations.
So much for "no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase."
The poor will bear the highest burden of Present Øbamao's higher Poor Tax™. Minorities will be even harder hit.
Three out of every ten poor people will be paying this over 250-percent increase in taxes he wants to unfairly impose on them. But they won't receive any additional benefits from his higher taxes on them since their children aren't included in his latest Middle-Class Welfare/Vote-Buying Handout scheme.
By contrast, only one in five people whose votes he's buying with his middle-class handout are going to see their taxes increase. So, in light of the fact that those with higher incomes smoke less and thus can avoid the brunt of the Øbamarx Poor Tax, they won't be paying anywhere near their fair share.
The unprecedentedly high tax burden that Present Ø'promise-breaker wants to impose on minorities is worse. Especially for blacks, since over two out of every five poor blacks, including over half of all poor black men, will be directly hit by Former Senator Øbamarx's tax increase.
It's enough to make someone say,
But the worst thing that has happened to us is that as a nation we have lost our way. We have lost faith that Americans can still be the good guys, that we can... help the poor....
We won't be getting that faith back, either, after
Present Øbamao makes sure the poor and minorities see their taxes increase.
Talk about a regressive tax:
Democrats are rushing... to impose massive tax hikes of at least 61 cents on every cigarette pack sold in America, in addition to new increases on other tobacco products. The money will fund a long-plotted federal expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Yes, this is Dr. Big Nanny's prescription for recession: punitive tax increases on the poor to feed a universal health-care Trojan horse.
Obama and his liberal Democratic colleagues sure have a funny way of demonstrating "progressive" values, don't they? Health surveys show that smokers are more likely to be blue-collar workers, minorities and have less than a high-school education. The National Taxpayers Union noted that tobacco taxes take a 50 times larger share of income from those earning less than $20,000 than those earning more than $200,000. Put another way: Families making less than $30,000 per year pay more than half of all taxes paid on cigarettes, while families making more than $60,000 pay only 14 percent.
That's the dictionary definition of "regressive," not "progressive."
Before delving into what the Øbammunist middle-class vote-buying handout goodies are, let's find out how much they're going to cost the poor and minorities he's excluding from any receipt of those goodies.
The math's so easy, in fact, even a liberal could do it... on a good day... if they had a big-button calculator... and their remedial-math teacher refrained from refusing to have to continually correct their wrong answers for fear of destroying their self-esteem:
Given that Former Senator Øblowa's Middle-Class Welfare/Vote-Buying Handout will be at least $33 billion over the next 4½ years, and that his increased Poor Tax™ is $0.61 on each pack of cigarettes, the number of packs in need of smoking to fund his Middle-Class Bribes for Votes Program® is 54 billion.
At present there are 45 million cigarette consumers in the United States. Over half of them are poor (i.e., 28% of 36 million at 100% poverty, plus 26% of 54 million at 100-200% poverty, equals 24 million).
Therefore, each of them would have to buy a total of 1,200 packs. That's 270 packs a year, or a carton (10 packs) every two weeks!
And since the poor are the only ones who come anywhere close to smoking that much — indeed, 47 percent of all tobacco purchasers have an annual household income of less than $30,000 (it rises to 77 percent when you include those having less than only $50,000) — they will bear an even more disproportionate burden of Øbonghit's unfair tax increase.
It also means the poor and minorities will have less money to spend as they're running their homes, working hard trying to support their children, and "needing to cut themselves some slack" against the added stress from Øbamarx's Recession® that's pounding them.
How much less? Since the Øbamao Poor Tax on poverty-stricken minorities and non-minorities' half-carton a week adds up to a total hit of $741 on them, they'll have $165 less to spend every year through at least 2013. That's in addition to the $105 a year they're already going to be forking over to the Government That's There To "Help" Them™ through the steeply regressive federal excise tax currently slapped on them as second-class taxpayers.
So, liberals, choose which one you want these poor and minority parents to cut out for their kids:
That $165 month's worth of food so their hunger-stricken kids can eat more than what your inadequate food-stamp programs provide?
— Headline: Demoqrats want to starve The Children!
That $165 Winter's coat and other clothes so their kids can have something warm to wear when they go to your government schools?
— Headline: Demoqrats want The Children to freeze and even go naked!
That $165 summer month's electric bill payment so their kids can stay cool during the hot afternoons caused by your global warming climate change as well as turn on their desk lamps at night?
— Headlines: Demoqrats want The Children to sit in the dark without electricity! Demoqrats want The Children to not be able to see to do their homework! Demoqrats want The Children to go to bed drenched in sweat!
Before you smug liberals (but I repeat myself) look down your upturned noses and arrogantly say, "Well, then those poor and minority parents shouldn't be smoking!" think about feel what you're saying. Because if they do stop per your customarily racist-sounding demand, where is the revenue going to come from to pay for your "president"'s glorious Middle-Class Welfare/Vote-Buying Handout? Then you'd have no choice but to raise taxes on those very same middle-class folks — and it's bye-bye all their votes.
Of course, this highly regressive Øbamarx Poor Tax™ on low-income minority and non-minority parents means that a significant number of them won't be smoking. So the poor and minorities who still do, including those with children, will have to make up the difference by paying an even higher tax. At least $6 a year more after Present Øbrute's punitive tax on the poor and minorities forces a million and a half to quit or take to the underground economy created as a consequence of, effectively, that Øbamoron Prohibition(©1920-1933) aimed mainly at them and intended to hit them the hardest.
Call it the Øbamao Spread-the-Tax-Around Effect™.
Yes, we can see now that forcing the poor and minorities to pay more than their fair share is about as unfair as you can get. Even for a liberal.
But, hey, what do the poor and minorities matter? It's not like they're going to start voting Republican or any liberty-loving thing like that.
If you're a Dictatorat, you can afford to crap all over them. Same as your party did when it only somewhat more officially advocated making them perpetual slaves.
It's clear your promise-breaking Dear Leader(©Tyrants,Inc.) B. Hitlerian Øbameinführer(©Anti-tyrants,LC) doesn't care about the poor, the minorities, or their children. Why should you?
He also wants to destroy American jobs, especially those in the nation's cigar industry.
First, a 156 percent tax rate increase on cigarettes compounded by tax rate increases of up to 6,000 percent on large cigars, 2,197 percent on little cigars, 710 percent on roll-your-own tobacco, 156 percent on smokeless tobacco and 156 percent on pipe tobacco will lead to declines of 10 percent or more in retail sales of tobacco. This large reduction in sales will have a corresponding impact on industry jobs.
According to 2002 U. S. Census Bureau statistics, 1.17 million union and non-union employees are employed by tobacco manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. With upward of a 10 percent decline in tobacco sales, industry estimates project up to 117,000 jobs will be lost.
Second, the SCHIP tax increases will significantly raise the value of tobacco products held in inventory. The unintended consequence will make warehouses, delivery trucks and retail stores more likely targets for crime.
Third, the escalation of taxes on tobacco products will lead to a corresponding rise in purchases of tobacco products by consumers over the Internet and on the black market, where vendors illegally sell tobacco products tax-free and do not verify a customer’s age to avoid selling to minors.
Finally, because most Americans who buy tobacco are in the low or middle- income range, raising tobacco taxes will affect the poor more disproportionately.
President-elect Barack Obama needs to keep his campaign promise and not raise taxes, including cigarette and tobacco taxes, on any American who earns less than $250,000....
Scott Ramminger is president of the American Wholesale Marketers Association. The piece also reflects the stand of the Southern Association of Wholesale Distributors, the National Association of Convenience Stores, Petroleum Marketers Association of America, the National Association of Tobacco Outlets and the National Association of Truck Stop Operators.
It's safe to assume negligible revenues raised from customers of our country's cigar industry, primarily due to the utter certainty there won't be much of one left after the Øbamao Tax Increase™ gets done ravaging it.
How ironic that the liberals' boogymen, Eeevil Corporations™, care demonstrably more about the jobs and living wages of struggling American workers. This includes even Big Tobacco:
We're not opposed to SCHIP, but we are opposed to the funding mechanism for it.
SCHIP, as a tax of convenience, will tax mostly those who are less able to pay the tax as they choose to use this legal product. Historically, tax increases at the federal level have been passed on to consumers — even as those proponents of increasing cigarette taxes tend to indicate that everybody but the consumer will pay the tax.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 80 percent of the people who smoke make less than $75,000, and 99 percent make less than $250,000. There are more people below the poverty line purchasing cigarettes than those above the poverty line.
So, the notion that no one under $250,000 will face a tax increase under the new administration will prove to be false within a couple of weeks of the new administration being sworn in.
If they made over $250,000, and were Demoqrats, they could
get away with cheating on their payment of those taxes and get nominated for a high-level position in the Øbamob administration. However, they aren't afforded such privileged exemption under the Democrooks'
Rangel Rule.
Certainly even liberals know or should know that slapping any tax on those least able to afford it is never a good idea if your goal is to derive some steady source of revenue from it. Liberals' most beloved group of people of all time — lawyers — are capable of grasping this incongruity:
Therefore, some argue that this places two positive goals for society — reducing smoking and funding children's health care — at odds with each other. After a few years, it's also possible that even if the tobacco tax is implemented for funding of SCHIP, reductions in the number of smokers (and thus, revenue) would lead to the same problem of funding for this significant federally funded program.
That is, if your goal actually involves raising funds.
But we're talking about liberals here.
With the new bill, Schip will be open to everyone up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or $63,081 for a family of four. In other words, a program supposedly targeted at low-income families has an eligibility ceiling higher than the U.S. median household income, which according to the Census Bureau is $50,233. Even the 300% figure isn't really a ceiling, given that states can get a government waiver to go even higher. Tom Daschle's folks at Health and Human Services will barely read the state paperwork before rubberstamping these expansions.
The political purpose behind Schip has always been to capture the middle class [vote]. Every time the program grows, it displaces private insurance. Even before Democrats struck down rules limiting crowd out, research indicated that for every 100 children signed up — now more than 7.1 million — there is a reduction in private coverage for 25 to 50 kids. Exactly the same thing will happen if Messrs. Obama and Daschle [Next Tax Cheat He Nominates To Run Ruin Health And Human Services] end up introducing a "public option," a government insurance program modeled after Medicare but open to anyone of any income. As with Schip, any net increase in insurance coverage will come by having taxpayers gradually supplant the private system.
Schip money is delivered as a block grant, which states are supposed to match, though national taxpayers end up paying 65% to 83% of the total cost. When states make health-care promises they can't afford — such as New York, which expanded the program to 400% of poverty — the feds always step in with, yes, a bailout.....
All this is propped up by a permanent increase in the tobacco tax, which will rise to $1 a pack from the current 39 cents — thus financing a permanent and growing entitlement with a declining corps of smokers.
Which brings us to the Øbammunist middle-class vote-buying handout goodies that Present Ømobboss is forcing the poor and minorities to subsidize.
Since its inception, SCHIP has been a case study in everything that's wrong with government — another example of feel-good rhetoric and lofty promises paid for with your money, except the rhetoric never matches the reality and the promises are always too good to be true.
Although its proponents are quick to throw up pictures of starving inner city children, the fact is that SCHIP has insured millions of adults, and middle class families over the past decade.
In some cases, SCHIP recipients were earning 300% of the poverty level.
This was famously exposed in 2007, when Democrats selected a middle school student named Graeme Frost to deliver the rebuttal to President George W. Bush's veto of SCHIP reauthorization, only to discover later that the boy attended a $20,000 a year school and his family lived in a 3,000 square foot home valued at over $400,000.
And who pays the most for SCHIP? A disproportionately high number of poor smokers — the very people the program is supposed to be serving.
To sweeten his bribe of middle-class parents for their votes — all unfairly funded on the backs of low-income ones — Former Senator Øbamunist offers to define every 19-, 20-, and 21-year-old offspring of theirs as a
"child."[T]he term "child" means an individual under 19 years of age, or, at the option of a State, such higher age, not to exceed 21 years of age, as the State may elect.
So much for "change," too. This is just more of the same Poor Tax™, jobs-killing garbage zer-0bama and other Demoqrats in al-Qongress tried to stick the American People with back in 2007.
Senator Bunning from Kentucky ably called them on it:
Whatever its other problems, the tobacco tax is a poor foundation for SCHIP. We are matching a declining source of revenue with a growing federal program. This does not make fiscal sense....
And we all say we oppose regressive taxes. But what are we considering today? A highly regressive tax. In fact, this tax is among the most regressive types of taxes we could consider....
Cash receipts for tobacco are projected to contribute between $300 -$350 million to Kentucky's economy this year.
An increase in the excise tax on tobacco will drive down the demand for consumption. This will result in less tobacco being purchased from Kentucky tobacco farmers by manufacturers — both cigarette and non-cigarette.
It will most likely force the specialty growers in my state — Kentucky burley leaf and Kentucky Wisconsin leaf — out of business. These are small family farms in rural Kentucky that rely on the revenue for their crops.
The money they get from tobacco pays their mortgage, puts their kids through school or allows them to keep farming.
The [Congressional Budget Office] has estimated that the SCHIP proposal will result in a 5-6% reduction in demand for tobacco during its first year.
This will most likely cause a $5.4 million reduction in payments to rural farmers in my state next year under the master settlement agreement.
Some people will say there's nothing wrong with all this, because it will force some people to quit smoking and we're using the money to help poor children.
But, who gets credit for this supposed act of charity? This plan would take money from one group of poor people and give it to another.
He called the Democretins on it again
last week:
The Democrat bill allows states to expand the SCHIP program up to 300 percent of poverty — or $66,000 for family of four. Personally, I think 300 percent is too high for SCHIP. The focus of this program should be on reaching those kids who are currently eligible for the program, but not enrolled.
This bill also gives New York and New Jersey a special exemption to cover kids in families above 300 percent of poverty. New York could even cover families up to 400 percent of poverty — or $88,000 for a family of four. These are certainly not low-income families. I attempted to keep all states on a level playing field by offering an amendment to strike the special exemption, but it was voted down.
While I do believe the SCHIP program is important to providing quality health care to our nation's most needy kids, I cannot support such a flawed bill. It was crafted in a totally partisan manner. It is not fiscally responsible. And it certainly does not protect the needs of low-income folks in states like Kentucky.
Although the Peloseri-run House Plantation™ passed the Øbamarx Poor Tax bill, the Senate insisted on amending it. So a few selected Senators and Representative began meeting to come up with a version of the Øbamarx Poor Tax that both the Senate and Peloseri's House Plantation will have to vote on again.
It's not too late for normal, hard-working Americans to rescue their income and their jobs from this Øbamao Tax Increase.
Email alert from Council for Citizens Against Government Waste president Thomas A. Schatz: Under the guise of helping children without health insurance, the House of Representatives voted 289 to 139 last week in favor of a massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) — paving the way for a government-run, universal healthcare system and dramatically increasing the cost of this program to you, me, and all taxpayers!
Our last line of defense against those who want to impose socialist, Canadian-style healthcare on this country is the Senate, which is expected to consider SCHIP legislation as early as next week. It is urgent that you tell your U.S. Senators today to oppose the expansion of SCHIP and the tax increases that would be required to pay for it.
SCHIP was originally designed to help low-income families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid gain access to health insurance for their children. The legislation approved by the House would increase the SCHIP income eligibility cap from the current 200 percent of the federal poverty line ($42,400 in annual income for a family of four) to 300 percent of the federal poverty line ($63,600 in annual income), making the eligibility ceiling for this "low-income" program higher than the median household income in this country. What's more, states can apply for a federal waiver to raise the ceiling even higher!
The House bill would more than double spending on SCHIP from $25 billion to $60 billion over four-and-a-half years. It would also permit states to cover legal aliens under SCHIP and Medicaid without the customary five-year waiting period established by the 1996 welfare reform law. [More information here.] In addition, the SCHIP legislation does nothing to prevent parents from transferring their children from private insurance plans to the taxpayer-funded program. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 2.4 million individuals could leave private insurance and join a government-run plan if this bill becomes law.
To pay for this big-government healthcare expansion, its advocates have proposed increasing the federal cigarette excise tax by 156 percent. Trust me, this will be just the first of many tax increases to come as SCHIP, like virtually every other entitlement program before it, ends up costing more than expected and sucking up increasing amounts of your tax dollars!
After the failure of HillaryCare in the 1990s, the universal healthcare proponents have wised up. They know they can't impose a government takeover of America's healthcare system — and the massive tax increases needed to pay for it all at once without provoking a resounding public outcry. Instead, they've adopted an incremental approach, where they will slowly expand existing government healthcare programs until they crowd out private insurance.
The backers of this plan think they can make all Americans dependent on the government for our healthcare before we know what hit us!
Please tell your Senators today to oppose the expansion of SCHIP and the tax increases that would pay for it!
Tell your Representatives today the same thing! The sad part of all this isn't how Present Øpromise-breaker is manipulating the people who, even now, are still inclined to support him. It's that they not only want but need someone like him to keep on manipulating them.
Labels: consumer rights, elitist despot liberals (BIRM), liberal racism, lying liberals (BIRM), Obama 'Nation', tax'n'spend liberals (BIRM), Washington D(istrict of )C(rooks)
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