It's a Tax!

The War on Christmas, like the 'Black Friday' sales, began early this year. Faced with the growing difficulty of explaining how paying the Bush Administrations bills makes Obama a spendthrift and how asking for a smaller stimulus package makes him more reckless than Bush while all the time being a communist, Mau-Mau, Fascist, do-nothing tyrant, the need for ever more idiotic distraction generates the need to elevate even more mole-hills to Himalayan proportions. So this year, it's no longer about how that Muslim Obama and those damned Jews and atheists are at war with Christmas, it's about how that damned tax-tyrant Obama is making us pay more for it ( and costing us jobs. ) Welcome to the new act in the Republican circus: the Christmas Tree Tax.

The Christmas Tree Promotion, Research and Information Order, which was first proposed during the administration of President George W. Bush in response to the yapping of agricultural lobbyist Christmas Tree Promotion Now, gave the President authority to add a 15 cent charge to every tree to be used to advertise and promote Christmas trees. The government will not use these funds, the Christmas tree growers will use the money collected from retailers to promote further sales with the intention, or excuse that increased sales will more than offset the cost. It's kind of a capitalist idea, Republican style -- you know, like the $80 million-a-year beef promotion order imposed during the Reagan administration, or the $8 million-a-year peanut promotion order imposed during the Bush administration. But we're not talking about St Ronald or St George, we're talking about that anti-colonial Kenyan/Indonesian killer of African Christians who hates Christmas and white people.

It's a TAX! scream the headlines and the banshee bloggers. How can we expect anyone to hear the whisper of "it's capitalism" from the rational rest of us? Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax, howls the headline at The Foundry, the blustery blog of the Heritage Foundation hammering out their daily dumps of hammered, beaten, twisted and red hot baloney. Will there be another headline informing us that the President reconsidered the Bush program and cancelled it?

INCOME TAX INJUSTICE

MoveOn.Org commissioned this cartoon to call attention to one of the worst tax injustices of all time … the infamous Hedge Fund Loophole. It allows a highly privileged group of Wall Street traders to earn over $1 Billion a year, yet pay as little as 15% on the their federal income tax. What does the country get back in return for this extra generous tax break?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Hedge fund traders do not create jobs, build factories, extend credit to growing businesses, fund new energy development, or confer any economic benefit to the country whatsoever. They do, however, fight like hell to keep their tax privileges intact.

Consider this: If you are a hedge fund trader earning in excess of $1 billion a year, the difference between a capital gains tax of 15% versus the top ordinary income tax rate of 35% amounts to $200 million a year. With that kind of money at stake, it is easy to buy off an army of politicians … and still have tons of cash left in your pocket. Killing the tax break would add $14.75 billion over five years and $24 billion over 10 years to the federal treasury … and help lift the burden of spending deficits and taxes from the middle class.

Petition your Congressional representatives and demand an end to this tax injustice.