Anxiety pervades the small-business community of Texas and the rest of America. Owners are struggling to make payroll, to build inventory, to keep the doors open another day.
Over the past year, the mortality rate has accelerated, and you can see evidence of that on Main Street of any city or town across the country, where there are “For Rent” signs and empty windows.
Despite the much-publicized bailouts of giant firms with staggering economic stimulus plans, there has been little financial assistance from the federal government for small business. Now, however, President Barack Obama has unveiled a $15 billion recovery plan that leaves many small-business owners wondering whether it’s a classic case of too little too late.
NOTE: This is an issue to call your congressman & senators over! Cap & Trade will cost you $3,900 per year!!!
The Weekly Standard has done yeoman’s work exposing the insane logic of an MIT professor, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Center for American Progress.
The controversy centers around a study by MIT professor John Reilly that shows a carbon cap and trade would cost the average American household $3,900 a year. $800 of that figure comes from, according to Reilly, “the cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases].” No one disputes that $800 a year cost. It’s the other $3,100 that Reilly, the St.Pete Times, and CAP want to disappear.
Reilly admits that cap and trade policies would cause energy prices for the average American family to rise by $3,128 a year. Reilly also admits that “Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners in one way or another.”
But here is where Reilly gets creative. Reilly believes that since those extra energy taxes will be collected and then spent by the government in some way, they should not count as costs to the American family. He told the Weekly Standard:
It is not really a matter of returning it or not, no matter what happens this revenue gets recycled into the economy some way. In that regard, whether the money is specifically returned to households with a check that says “your share of GHG auction revenue”, used to cut someone’s taxes, used to pay for some government services that provide benefit to the public, or simply used to offset the deficit (therefore meaning lower Government debt and lower taxes sometime in the future when that debt comes due) is largely irrelevant in the calculation of the “average” household.
Got that? Anytime the government takes your money, whether it be in the form of an income tax, or payroll tax, or capital gains tax, according to Reilly and CAP, this actually does not cost American taxpayers anything because eventually the government will spend your money on something anyway.
Without this assumption, Reilly admitted to the Standard, “the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800].“
Note: I would like to put this in context… A cut of $100 million from $3.5 trillion budget is like you purchasing a $3,550 flat screen TV & surround sound system. Because you didn’t tell her, your wife gets mad so you say, “Ok, ok. I will take back this…” and you hold up a $0.10 piece of bubble gum. Don’t be fooled.
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WASHINGTON (AP) – A senior administration officials says President Barack Obama is ready to ask federal department and agency chiefs to find $100 million to cut from the budget when he holds his first formal Cabinet meeting.
The official previewed Topic A for Monday’s Cabinet meeting on grounds of anonymity because it will be a private session. He said Obama will be reminding Cabinet members that financially-pressed families are looking to the government to spend their money wisely.
The president’s first formal Cabinet meeting is being held just days after a series of “Tea Party” demonstrations across the country in which protesters challenged the administration over it’s massive spending. A cut of $100 million in a multitrillion-dollar federal budget likely will be criticized by Obama’s opponents as inadequate.
Please remember, these are NOT partisan rallies. These are about the GOVERNMENT taking more money from you than ever before and spending it like CRAZY! It has to STOP! Please do NOT have Bush/Obama/Repub/Dem bashing/hate signs & no VULGARITIES! Thanks!
LITTLE ROCK (AP) — Gov. Mike Beebe has signed into law a nearly $10 million break on the tax that manufacturers pay on their utility bills.
The governor signed identical House and Senate bills Monday that would reduce the tax from 3.875 percent to 3.125 percent. The bills are sponsored by Rep. David Dunn, D-Forrest City, and Sen. Barbara Horn, D-Ashdown.
(Little Rock, AR) — A bill that would lower that state tax on groceries moved another step closer to approval Monday.
The House, without a single opposition vote, approved legislation that would trim the tax on groceries from three-cents on the dollar to two-cents.
The measure now goes back to the Senate for a vote on a technical change. The rollback in the tax would reduce state revenue from the grocery tax by about 40-million-dollars a year
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration’s seizure of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is potentially a $200 billion bet that it will help reverse a prolonged housing and credit crisis.
The historic move announced Sunday won support from both presidential campaigns, but private analysts worried that it may not be enough to stabilize the slumping housing market given the glut of vacant homes for sale, rising foreclosures, rising unemployment and weak consumer confidence.
Officials announced that both giant institutions were being placed in a government conservatorship, a move that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said allowing the companies to fail would have extracted a far higher price on consumers by driving up the cost of home loans and all other types of borrowing because the failures would “create great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe.”
Posted by Ray 
Biz Briefs 