Tax deal blows up over executive amnesty, which will give ‘tax credits’ to illegals

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New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

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Five things Americans may be learning

Are Americans learning anything from our protracted moment of twisting in the wind under the Obama administration?

That’s a good question for this Christmas season.  I’m not convinced we have reached the tipping point at which enough Americans understand that the unquestioned assumptions we live by – assumptions instituted in our culture decades ago – are what’s killing our way of life.  But we are blessed to be able to get our education

Liberty 101: Working for The Man

If Americans want to reclaim liberty in this age of governmental whole-life management, one thing we must do is take the trouble to understand how government makes us work for its priorities and programs.  The price of having a job today is working for the government, just as the price of doing business, for an entrepreneur, is giving the first portion of his earnings to the government.

Many readers will be familiar with the point that we Americans work, on average, until sometime in April each year to pay our taxes at the federal, state, and local levels.  In this formulation, it is only after “Tax Freedom Day” that we start working for ourselves, and not for the government.  Tax Freedom Day delineates

A fun Independence Day list of things that are now considered taxes

If you have decided to go along with Chief Justice Roberts and agree that Obamacare is a tax, now is the time to contemplate the many things this reading will allow Congress to require you to do.

The list is literally endless, because of the endless number of things ideologues can come up with.  But these are some of the top tunes.

Implications of the new “Tax-Mandate”

So, this is how I understand the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare.  Congress wrote an individual mandate – to purchase approved health insurance – into the law.  President Obama spoke with great certainty of the provision being a mandate, and not a tax.  Congress didn’t write the mandate in words that would make it a tax.  The description of the provision doesn’t fit that of a tax.  The provision is that you are required to buy something from a commercial vendor – i.e., not send revenue to the government, which is the exact definition of what a tax does – and that you are required to do so if you fit a certain income or employment profile; if you don’t fit the profile, you aren’t required to make the purchase; but if you do fit the profile and fail to make the purchase, you will be fined.

The Supreme Court decided that that’s a tax.