by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, HYPOCRISY, POLITICS
This would be really funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Brad Woodhouse is President of American Bridge 21st Century, a SuperPAC that “monitors what Republican politicians say and fights back when their rhetoric doesn’t match their records.” This is a PAC well known to be funded by billionaire George Soros.
So when Mr. Woodhouse pushed out a news story entitled, “GOP Senate Candidates Bow at Koch Throne”, someone else noticed the irony in attacking the conservative billionaire Koch Brothers, while simultaneously receiving PAC funding from liberal billionaire George Soros.
Andrew Kaczynski, who writes over at the popular BuzzFeed took to twitter to call out Mr. Woodhouse: “It’s almost pathetic how weak the Democrats ‘run against the Koch brothers’ strategy is.”, he wrote.
One might say this falls squarely under the “fights back when their rhetoric doesn’t match their records” mantra proudly proclaimed on the American Bridge website — except that Mr. Woodhouse clearly did not approve of this particular instance of holding people “accountable for their words and actions”. This only applies to Republicans, according to the PAC website.
Mr. Woodhouse huffily replied to Kaczynski: “it’s a shame you have no idea what you are talking about”, to which Mr. Kaczynski bluntly asked, “Since you’re outraged by billionaires influencing politics @woodhouseb will American Bridge be refunding largest-donor George Soros?”
Pointing out that American Bridge takes money from certain billionaires (approved by the Left) while attacking other billionaires (not approved by the Left) did not sit well with Mr. Woodhouse, as he retorted, “That’s a stupid question”, to which Kaczynski confirmed, “So that’s a no?”.
Mr. Woodhouse then began to rationalize the hypocrisy by applying logic Animal Farm: some billionaires are more equal than others.
“Since you don’t understand the difference I don’t think there is any reason to continue this discussion,” wrote Mr. Woodhouse, to which Kaczynski replied, “I guess @woodhouseb your billionaires are better than their billionaires,”.
Mr. Woodhouse clarified that observation by writing, “well, they’re not looking to screw the middle class to enrich themselves – so yeah – maybe you do get it.”
Kaczynski confirmed the duplicity by pointing out, “So you dislike big money @woodhouseb only when it isn’t your ideology. I understand now.”
Mr. Woodhouse’s reply (and final tweet) continued using the leftist playbook by a) casting the Koch Brothers as anti-middle class and b) his opponent as stupid, by responding, “I dislike people who want to stack the deck against the middle class and am irritated by people who don’t get the difference.” You can view the twitter exchange here:
So, American Bridge is okay with taking good billionaire money while attacking bad billionaire money. Because American Bridge “understands” and “feels” and “believes”.
Its website describes how, “We understand the frustration you feel with elected officials who campaign on one set of principles but govern by another, because we feel it too. We believe you deserve better than that. We think our elected officials should have one set of principles, not one for each set of special interests they represent.”
Can we substitute “PAC” for “elected officials” above?
Nope — apparently this sentiment only applies to Republicans, not liberals or PACs. If you check out American Bridge’s opening description, it states that American Bridge “is a progressive research and communications organization committed to holding Republicans accountable for their words and actions and helping you ascertain when Republican candidates are pretending to be something they’re not.”
Therefore, according American Bridge, only Republicans should be accountable for their words and actions, and only Republicans can pretend to be something they are not. Certainly not Mr. Woodhouse, who became irritated when Mr. Kacyznski “helped him ascertain” that American Bridge was “pretending to be something they’re not” by taking (liberal) billionaire money in politics while attacking (conservative) billionaire money in politics.
That rule does not apply to Woodhouse at all. Not one bit. Because Mr. Woodhouse is not a Republican. So Mr. Woodhouse “gets the difference.” (He “understands” and “feels” and “believes”.)
All billionaires are billionaires. But some billionaires are more equal than others. A classical abuse of logic by the Left.
by | ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY
Yes, there is something terribly wrong with taxation in the hedge fund industry — but it is not the perceived evil that the defeated Baucus/Grassley bill was attempting to “fix”. According to them, the problem was that the hedge fund operators get part of their compensation from (relatively low-tax) capital gains income.
However, the proposed changes to “carried interest loopholes” is for political gain only, creating a problem that isn’t there, in order to solve some mythical inequality. However, all it does shift the benefit of the capital gains lost by the operators to the investors. That fixes nothing.
Instead, the real problem is that the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), as strictly enforced by the IRS, requires generally that hedge fund investors pay taxes on huge amounts of “income” that does not exist. This is derived from rules that require investors to pay tax on investment income while denying them an offset for the expenses that were incurred to generate that income.
It is simply not uncommon for hedge fund investors to pay tax rates of 70-100% or more on the hedge fund income they earn.
Yes, you read that correctly. 100% or more. In fact, in my practice I see a few clients every year forced to pay more taxes on an investment than that investment earned. True, it is a small percentage of people affected in any given year, but this does not mitigate the blatant unfairness. How does this injustice take place?
It follows from what is the most inequitable provision of the current tax code, namely, the severe limitation on the ability to deduct the necessary expenses incurred by a hedge fund operator in order to earn income: investment fees and expenses, accountant’s fees, legal fees for collecting a settlement, etc.
The tax code requires those expenses — which include virtually all operation expenses of private equity hedge funds, including fees to the operators — to be listed under the category of “miscellaneous deductions”.
However, these deductions may not be claimed until and unless they reach 2% of the taxpayer’s entire income. The upshot of this is that most taxpayers do not get to benefit from these deductions. To add further insult to injury, that even if investors have expenses which exceed the threshold, these expenses become addbacks for the dreaded alternative minimum tax (“AMT”).
This taxpayer abuse then certainly discourages investment and is a major source of inequity in the code. If Congress were ultimately concerned with reforming the hedge fund industry, this problem — the inability to deduct necessary expenses incurred while earning income — would be the right one for Congress to fix. Trying to interfere with and fix who gets the capital gain rate in a “carried interest” transaction was a worthless and meaningless endeavor.
by | ARTICLES, GOVERNMENT
It’s another egregious example of the Democrats wanting to overreach boundaries in an effort to appeal to voters:
The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.
The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.
According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent. The bill also specifies that the oil-and-gas companies, as the seller, would have to pay this tax.
Let’s go after the greedy oil companies as a cash cow to fund our politically motivated government projects:
Kucinich said these tax revenues would be used to fund alternative transportation programs when oil-and-gas prices spike
Of course, when the Left hyperventilates over the (seemingly) huge profit numbers of the oil/gas industry, they always choose not to mention the enormous amounts of monies this industry needs to invest just to produce a profit. I’ve written about this concept before when I discussed free will and capitalism.
How delicious is it that our government — unable to even produce a working budget or spend within its limits — is deemed fit to determine what a reasonable profit is.
What happened to free markets in America?
Update: Mr. Ed Morrissey adds to the discussion by explaining to folks, like I stated above, how the oil/gas industry really doesn’t make that much in profits compared to other industry giants
by | SOCIAL SECURITY, TAXES
Dick Durbin has a love affair with Social Security. How else can one man continuously defend Social Security and mislead the country about its insolvency? He incessantly claims that Social Security does not add to the deficit. What he doesn’t tell you is that is he specifically and purposefully excludes accounting for the billions in promised future payments to workers.
And consider this: A company or organization earns $100.00 but spends $200.00. It only has to pay $100.00 now, while the other $100.00 is due for payment in the future. The question then becomes – to what extent is there an obligation to account for a method of repayment, should you have no money to do so? This is the very situation that Social Security is in. In contrast, the SEC is very explicit in saying that any company which tries to avoid accounting for obligation repayment will be considered to have issued a dishonest financial report.
Yet this is exactly what Durbin has been saying for years – when will he be brought to justice and held accountable for his outright lies?
by | HYPOCRISY, TAXES
The concept of an American President going after people making a lot of money and paying a relatively low tax rate on it is particularly naïve; it displays an absolute lack of familiarity with how people get wealthy. As a CPA, I can attest to the fact that the most common way people accumulate massive wealth is either by a huge amount of hard work (creating a successful business) or selling an asset (an invention, real estate, etc).
Many people who file tax returns with large amounts of income, such as selling a business for $10 million, will have a multi-million capital gains amount. It’s not that the higher income earners have some sort of capital gains loophole, but it’s really that the wealthy have done something well to attain the American Dream. And when they do strike it rich through their effort, part of their wealth is treated as a capital gain and it gives those earners a chance to keep a part of it. Knowing that there is a low capital gains rate is an extra incentive to work hard and be successful.
Many of my clients are wealthy, and I have experienced time and again that they will come to me and ask the question: if they are successful, can they keep the majority of their money?”. This is because they know that government wants to take more from the highest income earners who have proven their success, while at the same time, the government is quite happy to let them lose on their own on their particular endeavor.
Most in the top echelon get there from a one-time income-producing significant event. To punish such success by raising the capital gains tax only serves to drive a deeper wedge between the have- and have-nots in an attempt to level the economic playing field.