This time they want to tax you to pay for more troops. 1% for bottom earners and 5% extra for the top earners. Keep in mind that they don’t take away taxes – so they are in effect upping the income tax.
Two top Democrats say they want to impose a new tax on the wealthy to finance any increase in U.S. troops for the Afghanistan war.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the purse string-controlling House Appropriations Committee, is calling the idea a “war surtax.” He said that just as the federal government is expected to pay for its proposed intervention in the health care sector with new taxes, any escalated involvement in Afghanistan should come with a payment plan.

“If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well … by having a war surtax,” Obey told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday. “The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that has to sacrifice are military families and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is making a similar demand.

President Obama plans to hold his ninth meeting Monday evening with his national security team to discuss options for overhauling the strategy in Afghanistan. The president has been considering requests for tens of thousands more U.S. troops from his top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for nearly three months. He is not expected to announce his new strategy before Thanksgiving.

But any request would likely come with a hefty price tag. One option presented by McChrystal would bring 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan — a proposal estimated to cost about $40 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Obey said if an increase like that is approved without any payment mechanism, then other domestic initiatives would be wiped out.

“On the merits I think it’s a mistake to deepen our involvement. But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don’t, if we don’t pay for it, then the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every other initiative that we have to rebuild our economy,” he said. “Ain’t going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan.”

Obey’s proposal would be a “graduated tax” on income. It reportedly would start at 1 percent for low-income earners and rise to 5 percent for high-income earners. He’s calling it a surtax because it would essentially be a tax on income that is already subject to federal income tax.

Yep, leave it to them to find an excuse to try to tax us again.

The two holdouts are Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.  These two are the ones that can decide it all.  Landrieu has announced she isn’t running again so she has nothing to loose in screwing over her own state and every state.  This healthcare bill is not good people.  You’ll be taxed immediately.  See this.

Currently one of the ways proposed to pay for the new healthcare reform is to tax the so called “Cadillac” insurance policies.

What exactly are some of those policies?  They range but they include things like:

No deductible

Higher premium

Low deductible

Low  or no co-pays

Few or no limitations on services such as mental health care

Well hell, that sounds nice, I don’t even have those options at my employer but if I did, I would consider it.   I pay for the best my employer offers and I still have 20 co-pays and have to fight the insurance on some things.

But lets just assume that my company did want to offer better benefits with no deductible, no co-pays.  Right now it would cost them quite a bit more, but wouldn’t the quality of life be better for all those employees not having to shell out as much money and getting better health care without worrying?

Here is the rub.  To any small business, medium, or large that can afford to offer a better health care plan that their employees take advantage of  the proposed health care bill will TAX 40% of that plan.

The government is taxing the employer on a plan that improves quality of life.  Small and medium businesses will most likely drop those Cadillac plans because they simply cannot afford it – thus hurting the employees.  Who does this benefit when you tax a company for trying to provide better benefit package to its employees and now has to downgrade?

Well here we are in the new year.  Finley and I expect to have a new podcast out – we had expected to have one as a end of the year but no.  So this will be a quick re-cap of last year and a first podcast of 2009.

Gas prices are going up because of tensions in the middle east.  Suprise Suprise.

Tomorrow MacWorld will be going on and we’ll be following other websites instead of reporting ourselves, cause lets face it – we don’t have a travel budget.  This will be the final keynote done by Apple as a company as they are pulling out of large conventions and events.   I suspect we may see some interesting things.  I hear Snow Leopard is just around the corner.

Obama wants to give us $500 bucks tax credit this year.  This is not a check that you get to cash.  This is a tax cut that goes to your employer so they don’t withhold as much.  So if you usually had $100 in federal taxes held per pay check – they would hold $90 instead of $100 so you’d get an extra $10 per pay check.

Not only that – remeber the $600 check you got back in May of 2008?  Yeah you still have to pay that back.  So if you normally got $1000 refund check back from the government after April – you’ll only be getting $400 refund check because Uncle Sam wants his stimulas money back.

Update: finley pointed out it won’t be this year. But its just right around the corner ie. Next year.
Q. Will the payment I receive in 2008 reduce my 2008 refund or
increase the amount I owe for 2008?

A. No, the stimulus payment will not reduce your refund or increase
the amount you owe when you file your 2008 return.

The regular news media is honing in on Obama’s comment about spreading the wealth around but they didn’t seem to pick up on his crazy idea about having a flat income tax across the board and having to raise sales tax to .40cents on the dollar.  WHAT THE HELL IS HE SMOKING?

See for yourself:

Yeah, all those tax breaks and extra stuff they tacked on, guess what we now are strapped with an extra 100 billion that they didn’t tell you about.  Check this out:

While, I admit, you gotta be pretty dumb to share copyrighted mateterial of an unreleased album on your blogsite…this sounds like a massive waste of tax payer money to send the FBI to arrest an idiot.

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities say they have arrested a blogger suspected of streaming songs from Guns N’ Roses unreleased album, “Chinese Democracy,” on his Web site.

FBI agents arrested 27-year-old Kevin Cogill on Wednesday morning on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. Federal authorities say Cogill posted nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his Web site in June.

The songs were later removed.

According to an arrest affidavit, Cogill admitted to agents that he posted the songs on his Web site.
“Chinese Democracy” is a much anticipated — and repeatedly delayed — new album by Guns N’ Roses that is more than 10 years in the making.

Let’s talk for a minute about our three political candidates and their proposals for the “Summer Energy Crisis”
We have to agree that for every cause or action there is a subsequent reaction or effect. So the proposals so far actually effect us more than we expect.

McCain:
Called for several highly targeted tax cuts and federal spending initiatives. Included were a summer gas-tax holiday that would suspend the 18.4¢ federal gas tax and 24.4¢ diesel tax, and a doubling of the personal tax exemption for dependents, from $3,500 to $7,000

Clinton:
“We will pay for it by imposing a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies,” she said on Tuesday. “They sure can afford it. This is a big difference in this race. My opponent opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax but I believe the American people are being squeezed pretty hard.”

Hillary will impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent per gallon diesel tax during the upcoming peak summer driving months.

Obama:
Against Summer Holiday but for windfall profits tax.

Ok, so first of all, we decide to give ourselves a break 18.4cents per gallon. What’s the up and downside? Upside, gas may be slightly cheaper. Downside, our regularly scheduled repairs and maintenance to our bridges and roads won’t have their budget to do their jobs. Where do we get the money?

Secondly, to get the money we tax the bejesus out of the oil companies, who because of demand and the cost of a barrel of oil rising, have made more profit. Some would call it a Windfall Profits Tax. But what about the billions of dollars they lost prior to this year?

Cause:
Tax Oil Companies to Pay for 18cent/gal summer.

Effect:
Demand goes up, price of oil goes up more.

Because consumers see “oh look, we might save some money because of a fed. holiday on gas prices” the normal demand on fuel increases, thus because supply is still short and our domestic oil production is still stagnent, the price of gasoline increases.

I’d like to do the dirty math though to see what I’m really supposed to save. So being that I’m in Austin, what is that math?

Gas Tank: 18gallons
Average Tank Fills Per Month: 3.5
Cost of Premium: $3.77/gal
Cost Per Month: $237.51
Gas Holiday: .184/gal
Savings: $43.70
Cost with Savings Per Month: $193.81

So, I’d save $43.70 a month over the summer. Obama stated that it would average out to $28 over the entire Summer, so his Math is fuzzy. But let’s look at what really will happen.

Cost of Gas during the summer: $4.05
(Including Oil Companies Taxation)

Cost to Fill 18 Gallons 3.5 times:255.15
Savings: $46.94
Cost with Savings: $208.21

So now I’m paying $14.40 dollars more because of the demand of oil, inflation of the dollar, and the summer gas holiday paid for by taxing the bejesus out of the oil companies. Yeah, sure this is all a real good idea.

Where is Dennis Miller when you need him?

You know what this country needs is a jolt. Look we are fighting with these people over there, they’re our worst enemies. They live to kill us. I mean and we’ve got Alaska sitting up there and we bought it for dirt cheap, it’s loaded with oil and yet we don’t go in because there’s like five caribou in there, you know? Screw the caribou! I don’t give a shit [bleeped out] about the caribou! I say you run a pipe in there and suck it dry. The caribou can wait.

Seriously people, lets relax the tax and EPA regulations and boost our own supplies here in the US.