The 20th Amendment isn't Working

David Fahrenthold here for The Washington Post provides a nice summary of the history of the 20th amendment, ratified in 1933, which was supposed to stop lame duck sessions, but hasn't, because of air travel.

It seems the founders weren't the only ones without a crystal ball.

Bank Failure Friday: 6 Tonight, 157 Year to Date

This is an updated post which corrects information previously posted in error:

#152 was The Bank of Miami N.A., Coral Gables, FL, costing the FDIC $64 million. Stated assets were short by 44%.

#153 was Chestatee State Bank, Dawsonville, GA, costing the FDIC $75.3 million. Stated assets were short by 48%.

#154 was Appalachian Community Bank FSB, McCaysville, GA, costing the FDIC $26 million. Stated assets were short by 35%.

#155 WAS UNITED AMERICAS BANK N.A., ATLANTA, GA, COSTING THE FDIC $75.8 MILLION, NOT $195.8 MILLION AS PREVIOUSLY POSTED. STATED ASSETS WERE SHORT BY 105%. STATED ASSETS WERE $242.3 MILLION WHEN TRUE ASSETS WERE MORE LIKE $118 MILLION. SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU TRY TO GET A LOAN AND THEY FIND OUT YOU EXAGGERATED YOUR ASSETS ON PAPER BY 105% AND SIGN YOUR NAME TO IT. NORMALLY YOU GO TO JAIL FOR FRAUD AND PERJURY, BUT IF YOU'RE A BANK YOU GET A TAXPAYER BAILOUT. 

#156 was First Southern Bank, Batesville, AR, costing the FDIC $22.8 million. Stated assets were short by 44%.

#157 was Community National Bank, Lino Lakes, MN, costing the FDIC $3.7 million. Stated assets were short by 26%.

Next Friday is Christmas Eve, and the Friday after is New Year's Eve, so I'm guessing that's a wrap for 2010: 157 bank failures vs. 140 last year.

But you never know.

Rush's Brain Goes on Vacation Early

Today he's said the SPENDING in the $857 billion bill extending the Bush TAX rates for two years was minimal, and that the majority of it, $700 some billion, had to do only with the tax rates.

Pure rubbish.

A lazy, over-generalized point showing yet again lack of show prep, and an effort to co-opt the outrage and the influence of the Tea Party, which Rush is trying to steer toward establishment politics to prevent it from exploding into a genuine third party movement.

The tax rates, extended for two years, will cost just over $207 billion, not $700+ billion. The rest is all tax credits, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax yet once again, and a host of other goodies handed out via the tax code in order to mask what's really going on: the rich and the poor getting special favors through the tax code at the expense of the chumps in the middle who must pay and pay and pay.

Wake up Rush, you dunderhead.

Here's a table breaking it all down.

On Narcissism

"People who complain overmuch about narcissists resent the competition."

-- Imam John

TSA Screeners Routinely Miss Guns and Bombs

According to this ABC news story, last fall a guy forgets he's got a loaded pistol in a carry-on but gets through security anyway in Houston and doesn't realize it until he's in his destination hotel room after the three hour flight.

And then there's this. The story says it was an international flight. Didn't he go through customs at the other end?

Do you think if we had profiled the Iranian-American, Farid Seif, we'd have found the weapon?

Whatever people may think TSA is doing at airports, it isn't security. It's security theatre.

Democrats Become The Party of No, Sort of

By a margin of 3 to 1, more Democrats in the US House voted last night against extending the Bush-era tax rates than Republicans who voted No:

Like the Senate, the vote on passage in the House was bipartisan. While 139 House Democrats voted for it, 112 opposed it; 138 Republicans voted yes and 36 voted no.

Full story here.

On Compromise

"Death turns compromise into capitulation."

-- Imam John

Pretty Boy Hannity Gets a Lesson in the Constitution

From the American Thinker, here:

Dear Sean:

Concerning the 17th amendment, the argument for its repeal absolutely centers around states' rights.  If Senators are elected by elected reps and senators, they are more likely to defend their state against federal encroachments (upholding the 10th amendment), than they are if elected by the general population.  Any federal program - ObamaCare, the financial reform bill, etc., -  which increases burdens on state budgets would not sit well with Senators answerable to congressional bodies in their state.

Greg Halvorson

Tax 'Em All: Let God Sort 'Em Out

People who claim, like Rush Limbaugh, that no one is undertaxed in this country don't know what they are talking about. Both the rich and the poor are undertaxed. Here is why.

For tax year 2008, IRS figures show that the top half of the country, over 69 million tax returns, contributed in excess of 97 percent of the tax revenue, $1.004 trillion. The bottom half, over 69 million returns, contributed less than 3 percent of the revenue, $27.9 billion, a staggeringly small sum by comparison.

The effective tax rate on the top half was 13.66 percent, on the bottom half just 2.6 percent.

It seems self-evident that the poorer half of the country escaped a lot of taxation, but how?

For one thing, George Bush's creation of the 10% tax bracket in 2001 reduced federal tax revenues from payers in the 10 percent bracket by $42 billion per year. For another, the Earned Income Tax Credit diverts away even more money, now approaching $50 billion per year. These credits wipe out any federal income taxes qualifying filers may owe, and actually reimburse many of them for the payroll taxes they pay, so that many actually have a negative tax rate. This is using the tax code to provide what amount to direct welfare payments, stimulus spending, whatever you want to call it. But it sure isn't "taxes."

But the poorest Americans are not the only beneficiaries.

These credits also percolate far up through the income quintiles. And none penetrate as high as the child tax credit does, relieving the middle classes of taxes to the point that many people in the middle quintile earning between $38,551 and $61,801 also pay little to no federal income tax at all. Created under Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and expanded under George Bush, this credit now reduces federal revenues by $143.4 billion per year. People even in the top income quintile, making in excess of $100,000 a year, can qualify for this credit, which also directly reduces their tax bill, and government revenues.

Taken together, the 10% bracket, the EITC and the Child Tax Credit help taxpayers to be sure, but at a cost of nearly $2.4 trillion over ten years to the federal government.

Compare that with the big tax break the top earners in the country enjoy because the payroll tax cap is set at $106,800. Everything they earn after that escapes the 6.2 percent tax. The annual cost of that is now $130 billion, or $1.3 trillion over a decade. The denizens of the top 25 percent of taxpayers, who earn 68 percent of the total adjusted gross income in this country, will doubtless complain that they already contribute 86 percent of the tax revenue.

But the result is that a narrower and narrower band of taxpayers in the fourth quintile (those making between $61,802 and $100,000 per year) and in the top half of the middle quintile (about $52,000 to $61,800), gets squeezed with responsibility for income and payroll taxes without enjoying the relief provided to their poorer fellows who pay very little in taxes, or their richer ones who can afford them.

A ladder needs rungs on it to get from the bottom to the top and back down again, and ours in the upper half are getting worn out.

Congress Was Last This Unpopular During Watergate

36 years ago. Story here:

Americans' assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is also the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.

Extension of Bush Tax Rates Now Goes to US House

The Senate passed the extension of the Bush tax rates, which will last for two years only and is adorned with billions in new spending which we cannot afford, 81-19. Here are the nineteen no votes, a photograph of left and right in the current Senate:

Democrats:

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

Dorgan (D-ND)

Russ Feingold (D-WI)

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Kay Hagan (D-NC)

Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Pat Leahy (D-VT)

Carl Levin (D-MI)

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Mark Udall (D-CO)

Udall (D-NM)

Wyden (D-OR)

Republicans:

Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Jim DeMint (R-SC)

John Ensign (R-NV)

Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Voinovich (R-OH)

Independents:

Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Senate Votes For "Almost All" of the Bush Tax Cuts

So says TheHill.com, here:

"The package extends almost all of the Bush tax cuts . . .."

The devil is in the details, and I smell a devil.

Years of Blood, Sweat Equity, and Tears . . . Gone: Home Equity Down $7 Trillion Since 2006

The Nutter feels your pain:

Since early 2006, American families have lost $7 trillion in home equity — more than half of their equity has simply vanished. Many millions, of course, have lost everything they put into their house, and more.

Years of blood, tears and sweat equity gone. Remember, for most families, home equity accounts for most of their wealth. In the past, wealth in the form of home equity has often been the ticket to upward mobility; many a small business or college education has been funded from real estate wealth.

About 11 million families — about 23% of those with mortgages — now owe more on their house than it’s worth. Before the bubble burst, that figure was about 1%.

More from Rex here.

Judge Objects to Obamacare Bait and Switch: The Mandate Became a Tax

From Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine:

Judge Hudson writes, “Despite pre-enactment representations to the contrary by the Executive and Legislative branches, the Secretary now argues that the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision is, in essence, a ‘tax penalty.’”

That’s a polite way of saying that the Obama administration willfully misled the public during the health-care debate. In fact, President Obama repeatedly denied that the mandate was a tax — but now, in order to pass constitutional muster, his administration is insisting it is. I urge you to watch ... [w]hen ... Obama scolds Stephanopoulos. “That’s not true, George,” the president says. “[It] is absolutely not a tax increase.”

Now the president and his administration are arguing exactly the opposite.

This is a deeply cynical maneuver on the part of the man who promised to put an end to cynical political acts. Like so much of what Obama said, this promise was fraudulent.

The complete entry is here, with links.

Father Castrates Daughter's 57 Year Old Boyfriend in Germany

Nuts to you, buddy! Now you've got two pair.

Story here.

Obamacare is Not Just Un-American, It's Anti-Human

In a story at TheHill.com here, reporting on the ruling of a Virginia judge that the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional, we are met with the following bizarrerie:

The Obama administration argues healthcare is different from other commercial markets, because — illness being both inevitable and involuntary — everyone ultimately requires some form of care.

By this reasoning, government should mandate that the baby pay for his own birth, and the corpse for his own burial, the first and the last of the involuntaries which bookend human existence. 

Obamacare is not just un-American. It's anti-human.

America is Not Either Or, It's Both And

Bill Clinton once shot back at black incitement to violence against whites, and wore it as a badge of a non-extreme third way ever thereafter. His critics would say his sincerity was on full display in Waco and Kosovo.

The founders had already discovered a third way of their own, however, and had called it America:

The third model of human nature is found in the thinking of the American founders. “If men were angels,” wrote James Madison, the father of the Constitution, in Federalist Paper No. 51, “no government would be necessary.” But Madison and the other founders knew men were not angels and would never become angels. They believed instead that human nature was mixed, a combination of virtue and vice, nobility and corruption. People were swayed by both reason and passion, capable of self-government but not to be trusted with absolute power. The founders’ assumption was that within every human heart, let alone among different individuals, are competing and sometimes contradictory moral impulses and currents.


Thanks to one of those contradictory moral impulses, the American Revolutionaries shot back using real bullets when Redcoat extremists came to assert the absolute power of the Crown, not unlike the Korean Americans who took to the rooftops in Los Angeles in 1992 to defend their property against rioters. Americans at their best recognize that sometimes absolutism must be met with force, and don't lie about it or apologize for it.

Don't miss the rest of "Human Nature and Capitalism" here.

4 of 6 Current Tax Rates Already Do Not Apply to 80% of the Country

Per the US Census, all US households divide into five groups of equal size along these income lines for 2009:

1) $0 to $20,453

2) $20,454 to $38,550

3) $38,551 to $61, 801

4) $61,802 to $100,000

5) over $100,000 (the top 5% make in excess of $180,000).

Current tax brackets are concentrated on the fifth group, the over $100,000 set, so that the top four of the six brackets affect the top 20% of earners in the population the most:

10% for adjusted gross incomes $0 to $16,750

15% on AGIs to $68,000

25% on AGIs to $137,300

28% on AGIs to $209,250

33% on AGIs to $373,650

35% on AGIs above $373,650.

The result is that 60% of the country is responsible for very little tax revenue, and the expansion of various credits like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Credit have meant that an increasingly large percentage of the population is paying no tax at all.

For the 2008 tax year the Tax Foundation reported here that 36% of filers paid no tax at all:

Nonpaying status used to be a sure sign of poverty or near-poverty, but Congress and the President have changed the tax laws to pull much of the middle class into the growing pool of nonpayers. The income level at which a typical family of four will owe no income taxes has risen rapidly, now topping $51,000. 

As a result, recently released IRS data for the 2008 tax year show that a record 51.6 million filers had no income tax obligation. That means more than 36 percent of all Americans who filed a tax return for 2008 were nonpayers, raising serious doubts about the ability of the income tax system to continue funding the federal government's ballooning expenditures. 

The situation worsened dramatically in 2009, to 47%, according to the Tax Policy Center in this AP story: 

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. ...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 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 other words, the tax code under George Bush and the Republicans in 2001 and 2003 became an instrument of liberal social policy, providing massive social spending on America's middle and lower classes. Combined with George Bush's massive hand out to the elderly in the form of drugs for seniors you now understand why liberals hate George Bush so much: because he out-liberaled the liberals. 

And don't expect to hear about it from Rush Limbaugh. He thinks there isn't anyone in the country who is undertaxed. 

If there were really any conservatives left in the country, they'd be calling for a complete end to these subsidies because they represent government spending which we cannot afford, and for a broader tax base which embodied every American's patriotic duty to contribute to the general welfare. 

A real conservative would equate exempting low incomes from taxation with the practice of exempting high incomes from taxation. The "refund" checks which "the poor" receive from the government when they file their taxes are no different from the exemption the rich receive when payroll taxes are not collected on income above $106,500. The former are justified as offsets of the payroll taxes the poor pay, the latter as exemptions from contributions the rich would never live to recoup. Everyone in a narrower and narrower middle pays and pays those taxes, year in and year out, to benefit the poor and the elderly. It is unsustainable.

Obama's Senate Tax Plan Will Outspend the 2009 Stimulus: $858 Billion in New Spending

A veritable Christmas tree for programs which would die in the free market without federal help, like ethanol, commuter trains, and wind and solar energy.

Conservative Republicans should help the Socialists like Senator Sanders filibuster it.

The story is here.

Words Mean Whatever I Say They Mean, Says Alaska Judge

An Alaska judge has ruled against Tea Party candidate Miller for the US Senate because the judge doesn't understand the plain meaning of the English language, according to this story in The Anchorage Daily News. The law says a write-in candidate's name must be written in on a ballot as it appears on the candidate's declaration of candidacy, which any educated person would understand to mean that write in votes for Lisa Murkowski should match Murkowski's name on her declaration of candidacy. Instead, the judge ruled it only had to appear to match it, which isn't what the law says:

Miller argued state law doesn't allow misspelling or state judgments of what the voter intended when writing in a candidate's name. The law says write-in votes should be counted if the name "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate, is written in the space provided."

The judge focused on the fact that the word "appears" is a part of a definition.

"The definition of 'appears' in this context does not require perfection or precision, but rather a close, apparent approximation known to the viewer upon first look ... if exact spellings were intended by the legislature, even with respect to the most difficult names, the legislature could have and would have said so," Carey wrote in his ruling.


The judge has imported meaning and intent where it did not exist. A graduate, clearly, of the deconstructionist school of law. He should be impeached.

When the clear meaning of the English language can be manipulated at will in a society, there can no longer be a society, only chaos. Stop no longer means stop. Just ask Senator John Kerry, who is famous for ignoring such signs at intersections, and yacht taxes in his home state.