Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Ben Bernanke wants to "End the Fed"?

Not exactly, though he did tell the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is looking at the 2008 financial crisis, “If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the ‘too big to fail’ problem must be solved. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions were both a source ... of the crisis and among the primary impediments to policymakers’ efforts to contain it,” Bernanke said. “We should not imagine ... that it is possible to prevent all crises. To achieve both sustained growth and stability, we need to provide a framework which promotes the appropriate mix of prudence, risk-taking and innovation in our financial system.” He even commented that the FED should shutter financial institutions if they threaten to bring down the financial system. What financial institution threatens the system more than the Federal Reserve? I think Ben Bernanke alluded to ending the FED, or maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight.

Read a transcript of Bernanke's testimony
Watch Bernanke's testimony

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

It Doesn't Matter if Congress Extends the "Tax Cuts"

There is a lot of talk about the expiration of the “Bush tax cuts” at the end of the year and what that means. The most common excuse given for allowing the tax rate cuts to expire is that it was a “tax cut for the rich.”
It was actually a rate cut for nearly everyone that files with the IRS. Additionally, the rate cuts, still didn't reduce tax rates to below the George HW Bush tax rate increases signed in 1990 and took affect in 1991 that eliminated the “33% rate bubble” and raised the 28% tax rate to 31%. Though tax rates are much lower than the high of 91% the rates are nowhere near the initial tax rates that ranged from 1-7% in 1913.

Tax rate information courtesy The Tax Foundation

Let's for one minute forget about whether the 16th Amendment was properly ratified. Let's forget the claim that the IRS was incorporated in Puerto Rico. Let's forget the claim that only 14th Amendment citizens are subject to an income tax. And ask a few real questions, questions that led former IRS agent Joe Banister to quit his job.
Where is the law making the typical working American liable for any income tax?
Why are businesses only taxed on profit (receipts minus expenses), yet individuals are taxed as if 100% of their earnings are profit?


These two questions have never been answered by the IRS or by any member of the federal government of the United States of America.

Bob Schulz of We The People Foundation/We The People Congress filed a petition with both the IRS & federal government asking for answers to these questions and more. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia acknowledges, “they have engaged since 1999 in “a nationwide effort to get the government to answer specific questions” regarding what plaintiffs view as the Government’s “violation of the taxing clauses of the Constitution” and “violation of the war powers, money and ‘privacy’ clauses of the Constitution.” In the end, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus upholding the lower court ruling that while you have a Constitutionally protected right to petition the government for a redress of grievance, the government is not obligated to answer. I'd like to remind you of one of the complaints of the Founding Fathers listed in the Declaration of Independence, “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Regardless of whether the Congress decides to extend the “tax cuts” or allow the rate cuts to expire, unless they also reduce the size, scope & power of the federal government, the federal government will continue down an unsustainable path of taxing, borrowing, inflating & spending.