Posted on 11/06/2002 1:39:57 PM PST by Tree of Liberty
Neil Cavuto just interviewed Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., the director of the OMB, and Neil let it be known that he's hearing rumblings that Pres. Bush is considering a total re-write of the tax code and that SecTreas O'Neill is strongly pushing a national retail sales tax!
If that were really true, then you could find a law that defines the poverty rate in the US each time it changes each year.
The statistical methodology has been in the body of regulation and recognized by the courts as definitive since 1967. That methodology has not changed and was incorporated into Office of Management and Budget directive #14 in 1969.
The poverty line value changes each year in response to the economy, the methodology for its measurement does not change and is now recognised by the courts as binding in statutes referencing the HHS poverty-line or HHS poverty guideline as applicable in accord with statutes enacted by Congress.
HHS is charged with the responsibility of computing the value of the poverty line for each year using the methodology described and defined by OMB directive #14 1969 and publishing the result annually. The directive is now recognised law in the courts where controversy arises over specific programs means tested against the HHS poverty guidlines. There is no need or requirement for congress to incorporate the specific values each year as a statute. For the values are expressly referenced by statutes that rely on the numbers, and the courts have established that the OMB directive #14 methodology is the fundamental definition of poverty as it applies to statutes referencing "HHS poverty line" and "HHS poverty guidelines."
You cannot, because no such laws exist.
An all to familiar phrase used by TPrs, not very successfully however. I'm not interesting in hearing about your creative definitions of is.
I would suggest you use a different playbook that one is getting rather worn around the edges.
If by definition you mean the method of calculation, then it too is not fixed in any real manner, since the values of the variables used in calculating it (such as "inflation" and "cost of living") are subject to the manipulations of bureaucrats.
Methodology is fixed (it is a mathmatical formula), variables change in value with time DUH! that's why they are called variables and not constants.
You want to figure your own numbers for inflation and cost of living go ahead. Have fun pushing them through the courts or on anyone else involved in econometric measures.
If you figure the numbers are in error and have evidence to back you up go for it the courts are waiting your suit. If your numbers don't agree with that value which results from the application of the standardised methodology applied to obtain those figures however, you have nothing at all except opinion and no case.
You figure bureaucrats are playing games with numbers then go out and prove it in the courts, make them revise the figures. Until then your opinions are little more than sour grapes and of little application to anyone.
are subject to the manipulations of bureaucrats.
Numbers are also subject to the manipulations of demogogues even more readily as the demogogue is not constrained to a fixed methodology. A demogogue may claim anything, but making the claim and establishing a fact are two entirely different kettles of fish.
You have yet to establish any fact, nor even supported an assertion with more than mere personal opinion throughout this discussion.
I would suggest it is time for you to start producing independant evidences of the truth of your assertions rather than continue to rely on your stock cliches. They do not serve well in the determination of truth at all. They are just more noise and little substance and repetative annoying noise at that.
Yet you deem this financial transaction tax as socialistic, usurious, and confiscatory. You have given no basis for this opinion.
I certainly do have a strong basis for such an opinion, the Tobin tax is applied to a very small minority of persons to the exclusion of all others. As such it does not meet the very real criteria of equal protection under the law. It is merely an exercise of raw power at the expense of a small political minority to provide largess to a much larger voting majority.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
The Tobin tax is a pure exercise in social populist tyranny at its worst and is a perpetuation of what is wrong with the current now you see it now you don't shell game tax system.
The Honorable James DeMint (R-SC)
United States House of RepresentativesTHURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
12:00 noon"In 1996, Congress passed a historic welfare reform law that has dramatically reduced the number of Americans who depend on welfare. In spite of this positive development, Representative DeMint is concerned about the steady growth of a welfare/entitlement state that extends well beyond the poor and is forcing millions of middle income Americans into dependency.
There has been a shift in the relationship between individuals and government, he argues, such that fewer and fewer are paying taxes at the same time that more and more are receiving increasingly generous benefits. If it becomes the case that most voters do not bear a financial burden for this largess, then there will be little to restrain--and significant political incentives to encourage--the continued growth of government. And at that point, DeMint warns, we have reached a major crisis in our democracy.
Which is why the founders created a representative republic as opposed to the popular democracies that the socialist attempts to make of our nation.
You’re okay with raising substantially more from taxing retail sales.
More had nothing to do with it. Unequal and inequitable distribution of tax rates has everything to do with it.
Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention June 12, 1788:
There is no way that government can give money out of the treasury to certain political groups via not charging taxes
Certainly government cand when the government defines what it decides are "necessities" controlling what is taxed, thereby controlling who is taxed.
In the specific case burdening purchasers of certain "luxury" items with higher tax rates to the favor of those burdened with no tax rate by virtue of what they consume as government declared "necessity".
To use your own tunnel vision understanding of the unitlateral power of bureaucrats to implement there own regulations, a bureaucrat decides that yachts are a necessity for the right of locomotion and mobility to go where one will at ones own choice. Upheld by the courts to be a clear constitutional right, refer early Civil Rights cases.
On the otherhand it is not a clear constitutional right to purchase McDonalds hambugers unfettered as healthier substitutes are available.
The yacht owners(providing tranport out of an angry nation for a very unpopular bureaucrat) thus receive a clear advantage in the distribution of tax burden at the expense of the many McDonald hamburger gluttons.
Overall there is less money in the treasury, since yachts are no longer taxed and a specific group, yacht owners, have more money in their pocket by virtue of not paying a tax.
If that isn't redistribution by differential application of a tax code, I don't know what is.
This is nonsense. A financial transaction tax would apply to all people who engage in the specified transactions. There's no picking or choosing. Do you favor taxing people who buy new homes? Do you deny that these new home buyers are "a small minority of persons to the exclusion of all others?" How do you conclude that the tax on new home purchases is perfectly fine while the financial transactions tax is a "pure exercise in social populist tyranny".
Until you can show me a picture of Robert Reich in prison (or indeed, suffering any punishment whatsoever) for committing the "crime" to which he confessed (May 26, 2001, New York Times), then the argument that the existing legal constraints are adequate is nonsense.
Yada, yada yada. Tis such folly you have spun.
Violation of almost every law has occurred several times. Some of those violations have been successfully prosecuted and some have failed in prosecution. Only the disingenuous person or dishonest person or irrational person would suggest that a law could guarantee absolute compliance to the law, or that a 100% rate of successful prosecution could guarantee absolute compliance to the law, or one specific successful prosecution could guarantee absolute compliance to the law or set the standard for what does or does not constitute effective/adequate law. Thanks. //// /
When the laws already in place are shown to be inadequate to solve the problem,
You rely on a quote from a government bureaucrat that was printed in The New York Times. Neither of which are anywhere near being paragons of honesty that you wish they were -- no doubt that you're in their league.
Yada yada yada... Spin your wheels some more.
Do you hear yourself???
Like the droves of individuals who technogweeb says will starve themselves in order to "accumulate wealth". Good grief.
I know. I almost feel embarrassed for him. It's got to be humiliating.
Then why do you oppose eliminating the tax on necessities via rebate/refund?
You've already agreed that necessities ARE currently being taxed. So by refunding the tax paid on necessities, individuals are receiving a tax cut equivalent to the amount of earnings previously spent on necessites.
Necessities now taxed. Necessities not taxed in future. Tax cut to all in the amount of taxes previously spent on necessities.
BTW look up "redistribution" in the dictionary.
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