| Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page |
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May 27, 2009 |
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Story #1: US Military Prepared to Stay in Iraq for Decade
RUSH: "The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the world remains dangerous and unpredictable, and the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars. 'Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction,' Casey said. 'They fundamentally will change how the Army works.' ... Casey said his comments about the long war in Iraq were not meant to conflict with administration policies." What administration policy? They all have expiration dates, and remember the story from yesterday that everybody that supports Obama expects him to lie and they enjoy him lying when he fools conservatives here. So Obama says, trust me, I'm lying, that's what libs hang onto regardless who he's lying to so we don't now know how long we're going to be in Iraq. The boots-on-the-ground guy says ten more years. Obama says 2012. We'll see.
 Story #2: Public Not Happy with Obama Auto Takeover
RUSH: "The US government --" that means President Barack Obama "-- expected to own 70% of a restructured General Motors." Unions, 20%. The bondholders had more invested than the union but they are SOL, left out in the cold. "The prospect of a G.M. effectively owned by the government raises a number of thorny questions. Countless policy decisions -- on matters such as fuel economy standards, tax incentives ... will present conflicting interests." Usually the conflicting interest was profit and sustainability. Not now. Profit and sustainability, obviously the government doesn't care about that because they can just print money.
Constituents are going to ask how the government could own 70% of the company and have no control over deciding which factories stay open. They are in total control over which factories stay open. "'Without government financial assistance, G.M. would surely fail, with devastating consequences including massive plant closures and a probable liquidation of the company,' the U.A.W. told its members. Bondholders, who hold $27 billion in G.M. debt, were unhappy with the plan because it gave them a much smaller stake than the U.A.W. trust, to which G.M. owes $20 billion." So the unions are going to get 20% of General Motors. The bondholders are going to get much less. Evan D. Flaschen, chairman of the financial restructuring group at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, said, "It is unfair treatment, and I think the bondholders are being discriminated against." Same way they were in the Chrysler deal. "But the government has also put in more than $15 billion into G.M., so in a real sense it’s theirs to allocate."
You know what we need, we need a Supreme Court justice, we need somebody on the Supreme Court who was a bondholder for either General Motors or Chrysler who can sympathize with how the bondholders are getting shafted here. We need somebody with empathy, we need somebody on the Supreme Court that can understand how people in the private sector are getting raped by this administration.
Story #3: Democrats Looking to Impose National Sales Tax
RUSH: The VAT tax. Are you aware, ladies and gentlemen, that there will be a value-added tax? It's a trial balloon, but they're going to need money any which way they can get it.
They're going to tax health care benefits. They're going to do this, Robert B. Reich came out yesterday and said, (paraphrasing) "This is the one thing that Obama was wrong about in the campaign that criticized McCain for, for suggesting we tax health care benefits. We're going to have to do it." There's something like $285 billion to be had every year by taxing health care benefits, and now a value-added tax. This is a tax at every level of exchange, from the producer, to the wholesaler, to the distributor, to the retailer, to the consumer. And from the producer to the consumer, the VAT tax gets added every time something's bought or sold, the VAT tax is added, every transaction. And guess what? The consumer ends up paying all of that, or as much as the retailer can pass on 'cause the retailer, in some cases the wholesaler, but the consumer ends up paying for it. And they are looking at a humongous amount of money here.
Now, they have the VAT tax in Europe. What, Snerdley? What do you mean, how did it happen? How did what happen? The idea of a VAT tax? Think of the VAT tax as a national sales tax added onto the sales tax that you already pay in your state. What do you mean, how did it happen? What do you mean, how did it happen? Yeah, they're floating it as a trial balloon. It's a story out there in the Washington Post. They're floating it as a trial balloon and they're going to see if anybody cares or objects to it and who objects to it.
Now, the big problem with the national sales tax is, of course, that it is regressive. And that is, it hits the poor and women and minorities the hardest. Can you imagine a national sales tax at McDonald's? A national sales tax at any low-cost retail enterprise, of course, what's going to happen then is that representatives of poor, women, minorities will scream bloody murder, and there will be a tax credit for these people or maybe coupons for free Big Macs. I don't know what they'll do at the Obama administration but they'll ameliorate it somehow because he's going to try to soak as much of the wealthy as often as he can. They're going to need the money, Snerdley. They're going to need the money. They cannot cut taxes now. It's too late. Well, it's never too late to do that, but the unemployment the way it is, with no sign that's going to let up any time soon, and they're even telling us that.
Story #4: Proof Supply-Side Works: IRS Tax Revenue Plunges
RUSH: Look, folks, do you realize we're committed to spending $11 trillion over the next ten years that we don't have? In fact, the IRS reported that April tax revenues -- generally April is a huge month for income tax revenue because a lot of people wait to pay until the last moment, April the 15th. April tax revenues were down 34%, $138 billion less this April than last because of all the people unemployed. You know, that statistic right there illustrates how cutting taxes works. Supply-side, whatever you want to call it. We've got people out of work who are not paying taxes. You add that to all that Obama has spent, we're going to have a budget deficit this year of over $2 trillion. They are searching everywhere they can for money.
Story #5: Is Obama Closing Republican-Owned Car Dealers?
RUSH: Members of Congress have been calling Steve Rattner and Ron Bloom, who are running the auto task force for Obama, and they are starting to complain about the closing of Chrysler and General Motors dealerships in their states because this is going to lead to more unemployment. Nobody can figure out exactly why certain dealerships are being targeted to be closed. There are some people looking into it, but the evidence is sketchy. All we know is that a whole lot of really successful dealerships are being shut down. Some of them happen to be owned by people who contributed lots of money to Republicans.
I mean, thousands of dealerships that have been closed, and we don't have a baseline to start from here, and we don't have the names of all the dealerships that have been closed so it's a mess, but members of Congress are starting to get concerned about it because, ladies and gentlemen, it's gonna affect their districts. As factories close or move, those calls most likely will grow more intense, the calls for closing a dealership. In part because members of Congress will have a hard time explaining to constituents how the government could own 70% of a company and still have no control over deciding which factories stay open and which are closed. That's BS. It's Obama that is choosing. Chrysler didn't choose which dealerships to close. Obama's doing it, the car czar, Steve Rattner, Ron Bloom, they're the ones deciding which dealerships get closed, and that's why it's interesting to note how they're doing it.
Story #6: One Third of Maryland Millionaires Move Away
RUSH: From the Wall Street Journal. "Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were 'willing and able to pay their fair share.' The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would 'grin and bear it.'
"One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a 'substantial decline.' On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates,' because they left. "No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession. … The Maryland state revenue office says it's 'way too early' to tell how many millionaires moved out of the state when the tax rates rose. But no one disputes that some rich filers did leave. All of this means that the burden of paying for bloated government in Annapolis will fall on the middle class," as the rich millionaires leave to avoid the tax. And hello New York. I mean this is exactly what is going to happen there.
Story #7: Steelers' Hines Ward Thrilled by Day with Obama
RUSH: Now, about the Steelers at the White House, I have not read anywhere that the Steelers were upset that they had to pack boxes for four hours and didn't get to do the usual White House party. I don't know that teams being invited to the White House have a party anyway. Normally they show up for lunch, they have coat and tie on, have a little tour and they're ushered out of there. They don't stay for four hours. Although, there's a story in the Pittsburgh paper today Hines Ward got to talk to Obama for 30 minutes and it made his day, it made his life. Number 86, wide receiver, Pittsburgh Steelers, Hines Ward, got to talk to Obama about his life and about his job. He just loves Obama.
Story #8: Mrs. Clinton Holds Press Conference on N. Korea
RUSH: At this very moment, as we speak, the secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, conducting a press conference on the status of our relationship with North Korea. They have launched yet another missile. This is six of them. They are testing underground nuclear weapons. Now, you have to assume that if North Korea's doing this, the Iranians are soon going to be capable and the Russians and the Chinese are involved in this whole mix as well. The Russians are out saying, "Oh, my God, this is gonna lead to nuclear war!" Now, Mrs. Clinton's up there speaking. She's saying that North Korea is ignoring the international community. Hey, Mrs. Clinton, they have been ignoring the international community for 15 years! Since 1994 they have been ignoring the international community!
The international community has done nothing about it, and now North Korea -- if we are to believe the seismic results that people say they've seen -- did light off a nuke over the weekend underground. They've got one, if we're to believe this. Nobody stopped 'em. Now what do we do? Not much we can do. Do a bunch of press conferences, how much we oppose this. Remember, Mrs. Clinton went on Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox within the last couple of months and started laughing and joking, hey, Kim Jong Il, if you're watching this show, we want to talk to you. You remember that? I'm sure she was credited by many on the left for an amazing ability to reach out and a desire. Fifteen years the international community has failed to deal with North Korea, about the same amount of time they failed to deal with Iran and Iraq.
Story #9: Messiah-Saved Columbus Cops May Still Lose Jobs
RUSH: All right, here's that Columbus, Ohio, story, and it's also happening in Toledo, by the way. It's a CNN story: "It was a success story the White House was eager to highlight: Earlier this year, President Obama attended the graduation of 25 police recruits in Columbus, Ohio, touting it as a victory for the federal stimulus package. On March 6 in Columbus, Ohio, President Obama touted the jobs the stimulus plan would save. Without the money, the officers never would have hit the streets." With the money, $1.2 million, they hit the street for a while. But then after the $1.2 million runs out to pay them, Columbus has to take over, and Columbus doesn't have the money. Columbus police on Tuesday announced massive budget cuts that could mean hundreds of layoffs, including the 25 stimulus cop jobs. Among those who could lose their jobs, if voters reject the tax increase on the ballot, 25 new officers who shook the president's hand. No other budget cuts are considered here? Only tax increases can save the day, Columbus, is that it? How is this even a possibility? The Messiah touched these men. The Messiah declared these people saved. Where's the stimulus? Obama had a recovery plan. How can this happen? And, same thing in Toledo. Toledo police layoffs are leading to gun buying, is the story in Toledo. They're laying the cops off, citizens are buying guns.
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