NOW I understand…Eliminating a tax DECREASE is NOT a tax INCREASE. Thank you Speaker Pelosi.

Thanks for reading, or in this case, viewing.

–Matthew S. Urdan

Inside Government hasn’t posted much over the last few months. That’s because this site was instituted to explain how the U.S. Government works. The trouble is, since the TARP Bill was shoved down the American people’s throats last October with scare tactics more appropriate maybe for the current movie ‘Saw IV’ or V or whatever number it is, from our President, Senators, Congressmen, Presidential Candidates, and everyone involved in the financial sector; it’s impossible to explain how the United States Government works because it’s broken.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Without going into a critique of all things broken over the past year, CNN is reporting that illegal aliens are now going to be given permanent “Temporary” Visas and all the benefits of US Citizenship…and more. Illegal Immigrants are going to be given complete tax amnesty–they won’t have to pay any back taxes to the IRS. Wow…yet the IRS is still going after United States Tax Payers for the $4 mistake in their 2004 return. Plus interest and penalties. (Another story for another time.)

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Further, the 33,000 gang members at large in 33 of the 50 states are going to be given free college tuition. No state provides free college tuition to its law abiding citizens. All the gangsters need to do is sign a piece of paper that says he or she is no longer in a gang, and the college education is theirs.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Further, we the taxpayer, are going to pay Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars to provide incentives for Mexicans to stay in Mexico. Now this makes sense. Let’s pay Mexico money to improve programs in Mexico to keep Mexicans in Mexico. Now why would the Mexicans who would rather illegally enter the United States and gain immediate access to state-funded health care programs stay in Mexico when the United States is granting citizenship, a guarantee of no back taxes, and free college tuition to gang members? Further, once Obama’s Health Care plan goes into place, all of these illegals will be covered.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Who is going to pay all of this? You and I. And who will suffer? You and I. Not to mention all those who wish to immigrate to the United States legally, and who have gone through the proper channels and have waited in line for years.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

To quote a friend:

This is so insulting. It’s like you have been standing in line at Disney World for 3 hours and a bunch of people jump the fence and get in line ahead of you. Then, instead of kicking them out the manager gives them free tickets for the rides, lunch, a place to stay and coupons for free admission for the rest of their lives.

My fellow Americans and taxpayers, we can not remain quiet. I am urging all of you to flood the White House, the Halls of Congress, and the local offices of your elected officials with every email, tweet, text message, letter, telegram and phone call you are capable of sending. We can not wait for another Town Hall meeting or a staged Obama publicity stunt televised in prime time.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Almost 250 years ago, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere and every other famous name you have ever heard or haven’t heard in our country’s history went to war for independence and freedom from tyranny and to eliminate taxation without representation.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Well, here we are, crying out against taxation without representation. Congress did not listen to us about the TARP. Congress did not listen to us about various other post-TARP Bailouts and spending packages disguised as “Stimulus.” Congress did not listen to us regarding health care at Town Hall Meetings where the citizens were more informed than our own elected “representatives.” If we don’t speak up as loud as we possibly can, each and every one of us, Congress won’t listen to us about this.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

It is taxation without representation. Even though we elect our Representatives and Senators, when was the last time one of them returned a phone call to you, returned an email to you, or even sent you something other than a non-responsive form letter in response to a carefully written letter you wrote? The truth is that they don’t care what we think. All they care about is scaring us into voting for them by painting their political opponent into a lying, adulterous, soft-on-crime incompetent villain. WHERE is the HONOR in that. WHERE is the RESPECT for the PRESIDENT of the United States of America? Do you remember last year when someone threw a shoe at President Bush? Well just recently, not a single Russian Diplomat would even shake President Obama’s hand. How far has America already fallen? How did we get this way? By playing favorites. By allowing a privileged class to exist at the expense of the Middle Class. And now, by offering free to lawbreakers and gangsters what so many of us have worked so hard for all of our lives.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Congress doesn’t care about you or I. Congress doesn’t care about our well-being. Congress doesn’t care about the well-being and the financial security of our nation. All congress cares about is finding another way to give themselves a raise and to ensure their own re-election by negative campaigning, pointing fingers at the other party and by using every scare tactic they can learn from Hollywood horror films to scare us all into submission.

Look at what Congress is about to do and form your own conclusion. Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC.

Go to http://www.congress.org. If you don’t know who your representatives and senators are and/or how to reach them, this link will give you all of their office phone numbers and addresses. Don’t waste another day. If you were mad about $4.00/gallon gas prices, if you were mad about the wasted taxpayer money from Katrina, if you were mad about the TARP, if you were mad about any of the bailouts and lack of accountability from AIG and Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, if you are mad about health care or how Americans are being ignored and mistreated at Town Hall Meetings, don’t waste another day.

Watch the CNN News Video. This is CNN. Not Fox. Not MSNBC. Draw your own conclusions.

Don’t be submissive anymore. This is taxation without representation. We can not allow Congress to pass this legislation. We can not afford all the social and financial consequences. As a nation, as states, as individuals.

And if you detect some passion in my language, well, I think the quote comes from Hollywood: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Thanks for reading.

–Matthew S. Urdan

In a follow-up to an earlier article regarding this government program (nearly $3 billion right now) it appears that the hardest hit group are charity organizations who get cars donated to them for distribution to needy families, and others.  Call it another skewing of the marketplace:

Harrison @ Just Politics..?

Old Toyota? No, up to $4,500.00!

In the United States, finding a car owner is a pretty easy task.  In fact, according to a 2006 study by the Department of Transportation, there were 250,851,833 registered vehicles in America.  A very large percentage of these owners also vote so it would be a natural connection to draw a line between car owners, voters, and politicians eager to curry their favor.  As such, the Cash for Clunkers bill is making its way through Congress right now.  The bill, if it becomes law, will surely change from its present form but would, in essence, give an owner of a vehicle registered for at least one year up to $4,500.00 from the U.S. government if traded in on a new, more fuel efficient model.  The money to pay for this program, an estimated $7 billion, would come from the already-signed $787 billion stimulus program signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.

Supporters of this bill maintain that it will reduce American’s dependence upon foreign oil by allowing consumers to buy vehicles that get better mileage than their current cars do, will stimulate automobile sales at a time of decreasing sales, and will remove “gross polluting” vehicles from circulation.   “Cash for Clunkers” has already been tried in Germany, in fact, and some of what supporters claim has, in fact, happened.  The plan has boosted car sales in Germany and business for junkyards (cars turned in under the program must be scrapped to qualify for the money).  As a result of the program (in Germany it was more modest adding up to only $3,320.00 in maximum per vehicle) sales in April of 2009 were up 18% versus the year before.

On the negative side, careful study of the program showed that up to 75% of the money went towards people who would have bought a car anyway and, during the same time the program was in force, retail sales dropped 1.5% that German stores blamed on consumers’ shifting their spending from products to vehicles in order to take advantage of the program.

So is this program right for the United States and what side-effects can be expected from it?

As somebody who has worked in automotive sales for the previous six years I know the industry fairly well from an insider’s perspective.  My experience has been that when a special incentive is offered (either by a manufacturer, a bank, or a government) car dealers suffer from the famine-feast-famine syndrome.  What is this?  Basically, when consumers catch wind of a possibly upcoming special program they will delay their purchases (the famine part) and sales dry up.  Once the program is in force there is an orgy of spending as consumers seek to cash in on the free money.  Once the program ends or all of the consumers who could have bought did buy sales taper off to nothing as those customers who would have bought cars over the next 1-6 months are pulled out of the market early.  In short, the side effects of such programs can often be worse than what the condition was before as the normal buying cycle is altered.

One effect of this program which was definitely felt in Germany was where German tax money was going.  Germans build many fine automobiles but most of them are not known for being very fuel efficient (Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz come to mind).  So when Germans were given their $3,320.00 credit many of them took it to foreign brands such as Ford, Opel, and Renault.  Many economists questioned whether using German tax money to support company’s from other countries was wise.  Many Volkswagen dealers did benefit from the program, but companies like Porsche did not (Porsche said not one of its cars was sold through the program).

In the United States, one of the biggest arguments in favor of this program is the environmental benefits it will have (replacing gas guzzlers with fuel sippers).  Unforuntately, as with any government-developed program, special interests have swooped in to seek maximum benefit for themselves and the Cash for Clunkers bill is getting more and more watered down as regards fuel efficiency standards.  For example, trade in a car and buy a new one that gets only 4mpg more and you get $3,500.00 but for SUVs and trucks you only need to improve your mileage by 2mpg, not a difficult task.

In theory, the program could produce many benefits for consumers, automotive sales people (not the ones at high line dealers generally though), automakers, and junkyard operators but, in reality, this program is more likely to create the famine-feast-famine cycle mentioned above.

 Harrison @ Just Politics..?

The "famous" handshake.

The Obama-Chavez handshake got a lot of press.  The Left seemed pleased, the Right enraged.  Conservatives probably saw all of the “hard work” former President George W. Bush did taking a tough stand against dictators as having been given away so early into a new administration.  If you believe that Bush’s position was a wise one, it is easy to see why Conservatives would feel this way.  After all, people like Chavez are repugnant and, like the leaders of Iran and North Korea, they are not too friendly towards the freedoms that Americans hold dear.  Chavez did, after all, shut down a television station because they didn’t support his policies as well as many other things.

But is Obama’s embracing of these people really so terrible?  The short answer is: we won’t know for many years.

Barack Obama campaigned on bringing a change to American foreign policy and, indeed, he has done so.  George W. Bush’s policy of not talking to people like the Iranian president may have been morally justified but was it wise?  In shutting out people like Iran’s president Bush prevented any sort of progress from happening unless it started on their end first.  These leaders have staked their reputation on opposing America at every turn.  Indeed, it has become the red meat that they base their support on even as their economies crumble, all the while blaming America so as to deflect blame from their own shortcomings.  In embracing these leaders and showing that the United States does not necessarily view them as being evil President Obama does remove some of this power.  This is the good part.  The bad part is that we will not know for several years whether this policy of openness will result in our “enemies” taking advantage of us because they view communication as a sign of weakness.

It seems that critics like to point to President Jimmy Carter’s naive view of engagement as the “Obama model” while holding up President Ronald Reagan’s hardline stance as being the gold standard.  After all, Jimmy Carter didn’t do too well with foreign leaders while he was in office.  The Shah of Iran was deposed and a more brutal regime replaced him and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan which led to the Taliban and, not long after, al Qaeda while Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” stance led to the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union in 1989.  But times have changed somewhat.

New best friends?

The Soviet Union was, like the United States, a superpower with many of the same abilities and goals as the United States in terms of needing to project power whereas countries such as North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela do not have the size nor the projection of power that the Soviet Union had.  So the comparisons are not “apples to apples” although certainly all four countries did not have leadership which was inclined towards friendly relations with the United States. 

One thing we have seen under the “Bush Doctrine” of shunning unpleasant regimes is that these leaders have struck up alliances with one another so as to attempt to either counter-balance or make the U.S. believe there is a counter-balance to our friendly relationships.   Bush called this the “Axis of Evil” and, while I believe he was correct, his strategy did not produce any regime change in those countries.  If anything, he allowed those leaders to show that their hardened views of the United States were justified.

Right now President Obama is still in his honeymoon stage with American voters and world leaders.  This period cannot last once he begins to make defining decisions regarding Pakistan, Israel, Iran, and Russia.  President Obama was not, despite his vast amounts of charm, able to secure any real concessions from European leaders during the recent G20 summit which was a telling example of how, even with our “friends” it is not really about “cowboy” diplomacy under Bush versus Obama’s “Apology Tour” as, if it were, then countries like Germany and France would have agreed to put their troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan or accept Gitmo detainees.

So if our “friends” didn’t feel like helping President Obama out how will our “enemies” do better?  This is the central issue in Obama’s approach towards foreign policy.  Relationships take time to blosom and so do results but leaders such as Chavez and Ahmadinejad rule with a different set of responsibilities towards their “voters” than to leaders such as Sarkozy and Merkel.  Indeed, Chavez and Ahmadinejad have less responsibility towards following the wills of their people so it appears unlikely that they will change their behavior.

While it is too early to tell what the results will be of President Obama’s efforts the evidence suggests that not much will really change even if the volume of hate may decrease.

President Obama is rolling the dice on not being seen as a weakling when it comes towards standing up for the interests of the United States but, then again, much could be said of George W. Bush when he cut off many countries from his speed dial.

- Harrison @ Just Politics..?