Free Republic

Congressional liberals aren’t done taxing wealthy Americans. On Thursday, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced the Keeping Social Security Promises Act, which asks the wealthiest Americans to “pay their fair share into the fund.” “The people on top are doing phenomenally well,” Sanders told a news conference on Thursday. “It is time to ask them to help us, in this case with making sure Social Security is there for our kids and grandchildren.” The bill would require those with yearly incomes of $250,000 or more to pay the same 6.2 percent payroll tax that is currently...

Newsmax Ben Carson: US Like Ancient Rome; Obama Not My Target Friday, February 8, 2013 10:05 PM World-renown pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson told conservative radio and television host Armstrong Williams on Friday that his attacks on the nation’s ills in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this week were not directed at President Barack Obama. In his first interview since upstaging the president at the event on Thursday, Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said his comments were “directed at the situation that is going on in our nation and how we can...

In kicking the proverbial can down the road, Congressional leaders acquiesced to the demand that wealthier Americans pay higher taxes. The higher taxes came in the form of a higher maximum tax rate on those individuals making more than $400,000 and the loss of the favorable tax treatment accorded dividend and capital gains income. Such a strategy pandered to the majority of Americans who don’t believe they are “rich,” but fall into the great “middle class” which the politicians claimed they were protecting. In the meantime, those very politicians have deferred dealing with the real issue that is out of...

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi isn’t ruling out pushing for upper-income earners to pay more even after the “fiscal cliff” deal that raised their taxes. … The former House speaker also says the current Republican Party isn’t the “Grand Old Party that did so many things for America that commanded so much respect.” …

Republicans in Congress screwed up big time in voting for President Barack Obama’s tax hike on Americans. All in the name of letting Obama “have his way” in sticking it to the rich, the deal to avert the country’s cliff dive doesn’t do anything but stall the country’s fall for another two months. Republicans, yes, REPUBLICANS, voted for the first time since 1991 to raise taxes on Americans, a lot of taxes and postponed dealing with the $1.2 trillion sequester, cuts to government spending, until February 2013. There are no government cuts in this bill, making it nothing more than...

Progressivism in America has always been a thuggish ideology. It rests on the notion that laws require no evidence to support their implementation, that intentions are all that matter and that those who oppose "change" of the sort progressives like are morally deficient. Progressivism requires Americans to separate off certain groups in American life as evil -- the rich ("greedy!"), gun owners ("hooligans!"), traditionally religious people ("sexists!"), Constitutional government advocates ("bigots!"). It requires that certain Americans be cast as good -- racial and ethnic minorities, low income earners and women ("victimized!"), irreligious people ("rationalists!") and big government advocates ("experts!"). Progressivism...

President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their "fair share" in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior in chief's richest pals are getting a pass. It's a Golden Pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year. -- Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley's biggest...

Senior Senate Republican aides tell NRO that the tax side of the fiscal-cliff deal has been finalized. Here’s a sketch of the framework: — Current tax rates would be permanently extended for singles making $400,000 or below, and permanently extended for couples making $450,000 or below — For singles, capital gains and dividends of $400,000 or below would be permanently taxed at 15 percent; capital gains and dividends above $400,000 would be permanently taxed at 20 percent

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told a crowd gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Friday that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has given “veto power to the most extreme members of the Tea Party caucus.” Van Hollen called on the House to vote on a Senate measure that would raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 in order to avoid the fiscal cliff. The Democrat claimed that the Republican Boehner will not call for the vote because of the Tea Party caucus …

Comedian Adam Carolla has never been one to censor what comes out of his mouth. The gift of gab took him from humble beginnings in economically destitute North Hollywood to dizzying heights inthe entertainment industry, where he could afford to move a few miles away. It's a story of hard work and success that comes through in his recent book Not Taco Bell Material, a chaotic tour that takes readers from Carolla's early years to how he finally found his calling - and his success. Carolla's disdain for the politically-correct culture of sensitivity has made him an unlikely but powerful...

President Barack Obama in 2008, and again during the 2012 election, promised absolutely, positively no tax hikes on the middle class. The rich, however, must pay more: "It's not me being stubborn, it's not me being partisan -- it's just a matter of math." How does Obama intend to pay for our cradle-to-grave welfare state? Why, by charging the dastardly "millionaires and billionaires" who "can afford to pay a little bit more." No more extending the Bush-era tax rates for the rich. To do so, Obama tells us, would "cost" $700 billion -- over 10 years. So this "break" for...

Republicans have been forced into a Hobson's choice of either letting the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone or agreeing to a tax hike on the top 2 percent of income earners (not to be confused with "the rich," who have already made, inherited or married their money). If Republicans object to the Democrats' hitting job creators with a tax hike, three things will happen: Taxes will go up for everyone; Republicans will be seen as the "party of the rich"; and the inevitable economic collapse will be blamed on Republicans. If Democrats were merely trying to raise taxes on...

WASHINGTON - Did you see the story about Costco borrowing $3.5 billion to pay a special $7 a share dividend to its stockholders before year's end to avoid being hit by President Obama's higher tax on investors? What makes this story especially juicy is that it reveals how Obama's fat cat supporters, who bankrolled his bid for a second term and embraced his proposed tax increases, have taken steps to shield themselves from the president's "tax the rich" fiscal folly. The tax avoidance maneuver, which Forbes magazine calls "a six-year advance on the company's current annual dividend of $1.10 per...

"I'm in the top two percent," said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, this week on CNBC. "Right now, I'm paying 45 percent of my total income in income taxes ... You tell me, what's fair about that when medieval serfs pay 25 percent, I'm paying half? I don't care what the majority voted to do, they don't have a right to steal my money just because they vote for it." But according to most Americans, they do. And that's the problem. As America racks up more debt than God has ever seen on this earth, Barack Obama prepares...

Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported. That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half. Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes....

Message for wealth-bashing millionaire actor Ed Asner: Man up and take responsibility for lying to America's schoolchildren. Confronted by a producer for Fox News Channel's "The Sean Hannity Show" this week, the left-wing celebrity claimed he couldn't remember "a thing (he) said" on a vile propaganda video produced and published by the California Federation of Teachers. Asner narrated the unforgettable eight-minute anti-capitalist screed geared toward children. Think Occupy Wall Street meets Sesame Street. "Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore," Asner warbles in a folksy grandpa voice....

Ah, the hypocrisy of tax-hikers who do everything they can to avoid the taxes they wish to impose on others. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.: He tried to avoid $500K in his home state's sales and excise taxes by docking his newly purchased $7 million 76-foot yacht in Rhode Island. Massachusetts lowered its state income tax in 2001. Given the presumably large number of rich people who pine to pay more taxes, the state allowed tax filers to check a box and voluntarily pay the old, higher rate. In a liberal state of over 3 million tax filers, how many volunteered...

Residents living near the beachfront homes where President Barack Obama and First Family vacation with their friends every year since 2008 were alerted on Monday to some specifics of the Obamas' holiday vacation plans. The report delivered to residents living along the ocean and canal that surrounds the multi-million dollar homes at Kailuana Place where the President stays, informed them of restrictions that will be implemented for 20 days beginning December 17 and running through January 6. In a matter of weeks, Kailua residents will see the familiar street barricades fronted by U.S. Secret Service agents and Navy Seals and...

PARIS — France’s Socialist government is proposing a slew of taxes — on art, on businesses, on the rich — that are drawing criticism for stifling entrepreneurship and scaring off the wealthy. “Unfortunately, I think the politics we are leading in France will turn out to be catastrophic for the economy, which is already in bad shape,” said French economist Marc Touati, author of “When the Eurozone Explodes.” “This is a serious mistake, something you learn in [Economy 101] — it will aggravate the recession and therefore shrink the tax base.” Led by President Francois Hollande, the French government proposed...

Austria's center-left Chancellor Werner Faymann kicked off Saturday his campaign for re-election next year with a call for higher taxes and a commitment to the crisis-hit European Union. Speaking at a party conference of his Social Democrats (SPOe), Faymann said he wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy and bring back an inheritance tax in order to improve "social justice" and curb the "excesses of capitalism.""In order to increase the number of all-day school places… to 100 percent, we need €500 million ($650 million) per year," he said. "This is exactly the amount that an inheritance tax… would generate." …