As the U.S. economy continues its slow but steady march into economic depression, the Obama obsession with taxing millionaires and billionaires continues.  Consider, Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More of Millonaires.

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicaid.

Mr. Obama’s proposal is certain to draw opposition from Republicans, who have staunchly opposed raising taxes on the affluent because, they say, it would discourage investment. It could also invite scrutiny from some economists who have disputed Mr. Buffett’s assertion that the megarich pay a lower tax rate over all, because many in that group actually make more from wages than from investments.

In a speech on Thursday, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, agreed with Mr. Obama that the deficit-reduction committee “can tackle tax reform, and it should,” to get rid of many tax breaks and allow for lower marginal rates.  “Tax increases, however, are not a viable option for the joint committee,” Mr. Boehner said. Instead, he emphasized that meeting the deficit-reduction target should come largely from overhauling benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

Does the latest Obama tax proposal have merit or is it simply an attempt to capture votes based on a class warfare strategy?  Half of all American households already pay zero income tax and the top 5% of Americans by income already pay 60% of all income taxes.   As pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, there is No Easy Answer On Tax Issue.

“We’re approaching nearly half of the United States population that doesn’t pay any income taxes,” Mr. Perry said in Iowa, when asked about combating an “entitlement culture” in the U.S. “And I think one of the ways is to let everybody, as many people as possible…be able to be helping pay for the government that we have in this country.” In Nashua, N.H., Mr. Romney hit a similar theme: “We want to make sure people do pay their fair share.”

Of the poorest 20% of American households, those earning less than $16,812 a year, 93.4% pay no income tax. But even 30% of the middle class earning between $33,542 and $59,386 are exempt. Some Republican economists say the tax policies that cause this phenomenon have gone too far, contending that people who don’t pay income taxes have an incentive to support politicians who promise more federal programs, since they aren’t paying for them.

Moreover, they argue the tax code has become too dependent on too few people. Sixty percent of the income tax is paid by 5% of U.S. households, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who led domestic policy for John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “We’re going to have to have tax reform,” he said. “The system is broken.”

The U.S. tax code is a disgrace from every aspect but the odds of it being reformed by a deeply divided Congress are zero.  Taxes on all income groups have been too low to cover massive government spending programs and the result is a debt crisis that threatens the solvency of the Nation.  Our political leaders have promised unaffordable benefits to a vast array of constituents and paid for it by maxing out the Nation’s credit limits.

Ultimately, a solution to the Nation’s looming insolvency will require not only dramatic reductions of promised benefits but also large tax increases across all income levels.

Crippling debt and deficits have lead the global economy to the precipice.  Finances of world governments since the financial crisis have dramatically deteriorated and confidence in paper money has reached a new low.  Equity markets are crashing while gold (the barometer of trust in paper money) soars.

As we stare into the abyss, President Obama stands ready to address the nation.  His speech is likely to extinguish the last vestiges of confidence in a US economic recovery.

What will he say?

Based on prior speeches, Obama will reach low and use the standard class warfare blame game strategy.  Rather than accepting the warning from S&P that the US is spending itself into bankruptcy, he will shoot the messenger.

Highlights of the speech will feature the following:

• Blame Standard & Poors
• Blame Congress
• Blame China
• Blame Republicans
• Blame (insert name of anyone except Obama)

The trillions of new debt taken on since the 2008 financial crisis have done nothing except push the US closer to insolvency.   The trillions of dollars spent on bailouts, stimulus and support for deadbeat homeowners has simply put another burden on an already weak economy.  Will Obama talk reality and propose constructive programs to put our free enterprise economy back on track?  Or will he simply propose more of the same - tax “millionaires and billionaires”, spend more, borrow more and hope that things get better?

Based on Obama’s disdain for the free enterprise system and businessmen in general, his remarks could easily result in a total vaporization of confidence in the government’s ability to contain the debt crisis.  Obama’s speech could easily turn the contained depression which started in 2008 into an all out economic collapse.

After signing into law legislation that increased the national debt by a massive $2.4 trillion, the President said he wants to solve other issues including tax cuts for the middle class and extended unemployment benefits.  No mention was made of focusing on job creation but the President said he understood what the voters really wanted.  President Obama said “They want us to solve problems.” - Barrack Obama 2011

How would Ronald Reagan respond to the profound crises that the Country faces today?  Does the massive power grab by the government and crippling levels of debt, taxes and regulation have any connection to an unemployment rate of almost 20%?  Are small business owners, the engine of job creation in America, being killed by the government?

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people.” - Ronald Reagan 1981

“I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings.” - Ronald Reagan 1976

It’s time for new tactics and new leadership.   Socialism does not work as we can observe by looking at two of the biggest national financial disasters in history - Cuba and Venezuela.  The command and control economic policies of these two countries have condemned their entire populations to a life of grinding poverty and hopelessness.

The Two Stupidest Men On Earth

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s score card on the performance of Obama after 923 days, in alphabetical order.

A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.

B is for the federal budget deficit, which is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008.

C is for China’s military budget. For 2012, Beijing plans to increase spending on defense by 12.7%. The Obama administration, by contrast, proposed Pentagon cuts in April averaging out to $40 billion per year over the next decade, and Congress may soon cut a lot more.

D is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.

E is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.

F is for free trade. Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which facilitates $1.6 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush midwifed more than a dozen FTAs, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of FTA’s signed by the current president: zero.

G is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.

H is for Hillary Clinton, who—I can’t believe I’m writing this—would have made a better president than Mr. Obama.

I is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital.

J is for jobs. In November 2008, president-elect Obama promised he would create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. By October 2010 the economy had shed 3.3 million jobs.

K is for Karzai, Hamid, Afghanistan’s feckless leader. Still, the Obama administration probably did itself no favors by publicly dumping on the man, leading him to seek new best friends in Tehran.

L is for Laden, Osama bin. The president’s greatest triumph, which will forever put him one notch—if only one notch—above Jimmy Carter.

M is for Mexico, a country that manages 5.4% unemployment and 4.2% annual growth even as it fights a war against the drug cartels.

N is for NATO, once a pillar of Western security, which Mr. Obama is in the process of destroying through his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and his refusal to give NATO the push it needs to win in Libya.

O is for ObamaCare, which goes far to explain B, D, J as well as the Greek part of G.

P is for Pyongyang, whose ruler the administration is once again attempting to engage in the six-party talks. This is after the Kim regime welcomed Mr. Obama’s plea for a nuclear-free world by testing a nuclear bomb, torpedoing a South Korean ship, shelling a South Korean village, and unveiling a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility.

Q is for QE2, the most disastrous experiment in monetary policy since Fed Chairman William Miller’s low-interest rate policy crashed the dollar in 1978.

R is for the reset with Russia, the principal result of which is an arms-control treaty that brings us to parity in strategic nuclear weapons, leaves us behind in the tactical category, and ill-equips us for the challenge of a proliferating world.

S is for shovel-ready. Enough said.

T is for taxes, which Mr. Obama would like to see raised for “millionaires and billionaires”—curiously defined as people making $200K and up.

U is for Iran’s uranium enrichment. When Mr. Obama came to office promising to extend his hand to the mullahs, Iran had enriched 1,000 kilos of uranium. Today they have produced more than 4,000 kilos.

V is for Venezuela, a country whose extensive subterranean links to Iran the administration has consistently downplayed.

W is for the Dubya, whose presidency now looks like a model of spending restraint.

X is for Liu Xiaobo, an example of what a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize looks like. X is also for Xanax, likely to be remembered as the drug of choice of the Obama years.

Y is for Yes, We Can! Unfortunately, it’s also for Yemen.

Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers today proudly praised the $787 billion stimulus program, claiming that it had created or saved 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs.   Without bothering to debate how the Council arrived at its estimate of jobs saved or created, lets take the average of their estimated jobs (3.05 million) and divide by the cost of the stimulus program of $787 billion.

The government cost the taxpayers $262,333 to “save or create” each job.  Putting aside the obvious nonsense that the government can “create” jobs, if the government continues to “create” jobs in this manner, the country will soon be bankrupt.

Based on the Council of Economic Advisers’ math, we could recover the 8 million jobs lost over the past 3 years at a cost of only $2.1 trillion dollars!

Some more fun facts:

The $787 billion “stimulus” program cost each of the estimated 105 million households in the US $7,495.

The average median household income in 2008 was $52,029.

One certainty is that the average American household would have spend the $7,495 much more wisely than government bureaucrats.   The other certainty is that the government’s public relations effort praising the stimulus plan is just another waste of taxpayer time and money.  According to the New York Times:

The latest CBS News poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans said the stimulus had not improved the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 9.5 percent, with few signs of improving in the short term. The reluctance of businesses to add jobs has weighed on other parts of the economy and there are signs that growth has begun to slow.

Aside from wasting $787 billion of the taxpayers money, the next most tragic part of this story is that the government continues to ignore the wisdom of the American people, and continues to insist that the program was a success.  Joe Biden, regarded by many as the biggest buffoon in Washington, had this to say - “I am absolutely confident we are moving in the right direction, absolutely confident”.   This statement should be more than enough to terrify most clear thinking Americans.

Statements made by an absolutely confident Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Depression:

August 11, 1928 - “Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

November 1929 - “Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”

January 21, 1930 - “Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”

A new poll released by the Washington Post-ABC News shows that support for the president has plunged to a new all time low.   A staggering 60% of voters say that they “lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy”.

The poll results should not be a surprise to anyone based on recent state and local election results where voters have shown a resounding denunciation of Obama’s policies.   The country is clearing going in the wrong direction with living standards declining across virtually every income and social group.

The Financial Times assessed Obama’s problems regarding his recent plunge in the polls:

Astonishingly, 55 per cent of citizens think Mr Obama is a “socialist” against only 39 per cent who do not share that diagnosis.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

Big Brother directives flow out of Washington on a massive scale, attempting to micro manage and control every aspect of the economy and our personal lives.  Imbued with an arrogance beyond comprehension, the ruling elite believe they can solve any problem by simply legislating another 2,500 page bill.    The people are no longer being fooled by this nonsense and the recognition is slowly building that Congress could do more good by simply leaving town for an extended period.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

While the Obama administration has been spending trillions on unaffordable health care programs, global warming, financial reform and other matters mostly peripheral to most Americans, the issue of a floundering economy and sky high unemployment go unaddressed.  It’s always “jobs and the economy stupid”.  Without income growth, none of these other programs matter as reported by Bloomberg:

Seven of 10 Americans say reducing unemployment is the priority. At the same time, the public is skeptical of the Obama administration’s stimulus program and wary of more spending, with more than half saying the deficit is “dangerously out of control.”

The public mood is bleak, with 63 percent saying they believe the country is on the wrong track, the most negative reading of Obama’s presidency. After a year of economic growth, 71 percent say the economy is still in recession; another 13 percent say the economy is faltering and will dip back into recession.

Only 1 in 6 say they believe they are personally better off than they were 18 months ago, when President Barack Obama took office. They are more apt to see the economy today as deteriorating than improving.

Based on the direction the country is headed in, a logical mind would wonder why 40% of voters still apparently support Obama.  Here’s some rather dark thoughts on this matter by Wayne Allen Root, 2008 VP nominee for the Libertarian party, as reported by truthorfiction.

Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Obama is my college classmate ( Columbia University , class of ‘83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University . They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival … and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

Obama doesn’t care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

– Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”

– Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

– Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America . But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.

– Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions — including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country.