Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "trying to get more money from upper-income taxpayers is like playing whack-a-mole. So long as tax rates are high, rich people will figure out ways to protect their income.

It doesn’t take a tax genius; any rich person can make a phone call or hit a few computer keys and shift his or her investments to tax-free municipal bonds. It’s not good for the economy when capital gets diverted to help finance the excess spending of Detroit or California, but it’s an effective way of stiff-arming the IRS.

Or the rich can play the green-energy scam, getting all sorts of credits to offset their tax liabilities. That’s one way General Electric made lots of money and kept it all for shareholders."

"When the government taxes income, it raises the price of work compared to leisure. And because the tax code penalizes capital gains with higher rates, it also raises the price of saving and investment compared to consumption.

Yet work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn’t make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates."

"In 1980, when the top tax rate was 70 percent, rich people (those with incomes of more than $200,000) reported about $36 billion of income; the IRS collected about $19 billion of that amount. So what happened when President Ronald Reagan lowered the top tax rate to 28 percent by 1988? Did revenue fall proportionately, to about $8 billion?

Folks on the left thought that would happen, complaining that Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” would starve the government of revenue and give upper-income taxpayers a free ride.

But if we look at the 1988 IRS data, rich people paid more than $99 billion to Uncle Sam. That is, because rich taxpayers were willing to earn and report much more income, the government collected five times as much revenue with a lower rate."

Failed plot to blow up Ohio bridge highlights potential 'Occupy' link to violence | Fox News

Failed plot to blow up Ohio bridge highlights potential 'Occupy' link to violence | Fox News: "According to the Occupy Threat Center, a database established by data analytics company ListenLogic to analyze social media posts for threats to corporations from those associated with the 'Occupy' movement, leaders have called for physical destruction of buildings and violent action, and associated "hacktivist" groups have targeted financial and law enforcement institutions. Speakers at rallies around the nation have called for an uprising similar to the French Revolution."

I couldn't easily find any documentation of that. Is there documentation?

Buffett Rule's Deceitful Consequences | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Buffett Rule's Deceitful Consequences | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The president and many in his party keep telling us that the government needs more money, but if they believe this, why are they taking charitable deductions? I expect the reason is that most of us implicitly believe (for good empirical reasons) that private charities and other tax-exempt groups spend our money more wisely and carefully than the government."

"Even if the Buffett tax ever passes, it was crafted by members of Congress to hit few of their own. Very rich members of Congress, such as Sens. John F. Kerry and John D. Rockefeller IV, receive much of their income from tax-exempt state and local bonds and from trust funds, which largely avoid the tax. Members of Congress generally are restricted from entrepreneurial activities. So, of course, they have decided to increase the tax on entrepreneurs — the capital gains tax — which is a tax on becoming rich, not a tax on being rich."

"By increasing the tax on capital gains and marginal rates, the government makes it more difficult to move into higher income brackets, thus actually reducing income-class mobility."

The Libertarian Manifesto on Pollution - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

The Libertarian Manifesto on Pollution - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily: "The vital fact about air pollution is that the polluter sends unwanted and unbidden pollutants — from smoke to nuclear radiation to sulfur oxides — through the air and into the lungs of innocent victims, as well as onto their material property. All such emanations which injure person or property constitute aggression against the private property of the victims. Air pollution, after all, is just as much aggression as committing arson against another's property or injuring him physically. Air pollution that injures others is aggression pure and simple. The major function of government — of courts and police — is to stop aggression; instead, the government has failed in this task and has failed grievously to exercise its defense function against air pollution."

"American courts, during the late — and as far back as the early 19th century made the deliberate decision to allow property rights to be violated by industrial smoke. To do so, the courts had to — and did — systematically change and weaken the defenses of property right embedded in Anglo-Saxon common law. Before the mid and late 19th century, any injurious air pollution was considered a tort, a nuisance against which the victim could sue for damages and against which he could take out an injunction to cease and desist from any further invasion of his property rights. But during the 19th century, the courts systematically altered the law of negligence and the law of nuisance to permit any air pollution which was not unusually greater than any similar manufacturing firm, one that was not more extensive than the customary practice of fellow polluters.

As factories began to arise and emit smoke, blighting the orchards of neighboring farmers, the farmers would take the manufacturers to court, asking for damages and injunctions against further invasion of their property. But the judges said, in effect, "Sorry. We know that industrial smoke (i.e., air pollution) invades and interferes with your property rights. But there is something more important than mere property rights: and that is public policy, the 'common good.' And the common good decrees that industry is a good thing, industrial progress is a good thing, and therefore your mere private property rights must be overridden on behalf of the general welfare." And now all of us are paying the bitter price for this overriding of private property"

The Tax-Code Mess | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Tax-Code Mess | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The total quantity of federal tax rules is gigantic. Tax publisher CCH collects all the paperwork in one volume, and it currently spans 73,608 pages and covers nine feet of shelf space. That is more than triple the volume of tax rules as recently as the 1970s, as shown in the chart."

The chart shows that it was only 400 pages in 1913

"In a recent report, the IRS Taxpayer Advocate said that the compliance or paperwork costs for the federal tax code are more than $160 billion a year. That cost represents pure waste to the economy — it's like throwing in the trash the entire retail sales of Target, Home Depot and Safeway every year.

In addition to being complex, the federal tax code is constantly changing. The Taxpayer Advocate found that there have been 4,428 changes to the tax code in just the last 10 years. Those changes stem not just from a hyperactive Congress, but also from the constant gushing forth of new tax regulations from the Treasury. The result is growing tax instability, which undermines financial planning, business investment and other decision-making in the economy."

"Emblazoned on the Supreme Court building’s façade is the promise of “equal justice under law.” Yet the horrendously complicated tax code illustrates how far the government has strayed from that promise. Sadly, the purpose of those 73,608 pages of federal tax rules is not equal treatment but the top-down manipulation of society by Washington."

Tenn. governor vetoes college discrimination bill | Fox News

Tenn. governor vetoes college discrimination bill | Fox News: "The Republican governor said Wednesday that he disagrees with Vanderbilt's policy, but it's "inappropriate for government to mandate the policies of a private institution.""

Congressional Quarterly: Panel Votes to Boost NASA Funding in Fiscal 2013 Spending Bill - In the News - Newsroom - Ron Johnson, United States Senator for Wisconsin

Congressional Quarterly: Panel Votes to Boost NASA Funding in Fiscal 2013 Spending Bill - In the News - Newsroom - Ron Johnson, United States Senator for Wisconsin: "The Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee approved a draft fiscal 2013 spending bill 17-1, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., voting against it.

Overall, the panel’s Democratic leaders stayed mostly in line with President Obama’s budget request in shaping the bill. The measure would provide $51.9 billion in discretionary budget authority for the Commerce and Justice Departments, NASA and other agencies. The total represents a $1 billion cut from the fiscal 2012 enacted level, according the panel."

California college student forgotten in jail cell says he drank urine to survive | Fox News

California college student forgotten in jail cell says he drank urine to survive | Fox News: "A college student who federal drug agents forgot and left in a holding cell for five days without food, water or access to a toilet said Tuesday that he drank his own urine to survive."

NYTimes Realizes That The FBI Keeps Celebrating Breaking Up Its Own Terrorist Plots | Techdirt

NYTimes Realizes That The FBI Keeps Celebrating Breaking Up Its Own Terrorist Plots | Techdirt: "Over the last few years, we've noticed that nearly every victory the FBI celebrates against terrorism is actually about stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to "become" terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism."

"In one case, the judge -- even as she was sentencing the guy to decades in prison -- admitted that the guy wouldn't be a "terrorist" if it weren't for the FBI:"

Obama Worse than Bush on Civil Liberties - Romney No Different From Obama | Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign CommitteeRon Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

Obama Worse than Bush on Civil Liberties - Romney No Different From Obama | Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign CommitteeRon Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee: "When Obama signed NDAA he said ”My administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”

This pretty much cemented the conservative consensus on NDAA–no president, and especially Obama, should be able to throw American citizens in jail indefinitely without trial or due process.

Mitt Romney disagrees. Not only would he sign NDAA without hesitation, his position is essentially no different from Obama’s.

Said Romney: “There are a lot of things that I think this president does wrong. Lots of them. But I don’t think he’s going to abuse this power. I know that if I were president I wouldn’t abuse this power.”"