White House Has Poor Manners for Rich Folks

If you receive an invitation for lunch or dinner at the White House, you might want to think twice before accepting the invitation.

White House Makes CEOs Pay for Lunch

Four of the most powerful business leaders in America arrived at the White House one day last month for lunch with President Barack Obama, sitting down in his private dining room just steps from the Oval Office.

But even for powerful CEOs, there’s no such thing as a free lunch: White House staffers collected credit card numbers for each executive and carefully billed them for the cost of the meal with the president.

The White House defended the unusual move as a way to avoid conflicts of interest. But the Bush administration didn’t charge presidential guests for meals, one former official said, and at least one etiquette expert found the whole thing unseemly – suggesting it was a serious breach of protocol.

“I’m sure they have their political reasons for doing that, but I think it’s not what quote, hospitality, unquote is all about,” said Letitia Baldrige, who headed Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House staff in the early 1960s. “We’ve got to relax about this. To have people to the White House and worry about the price of things is laughable.”

“I don’t know what the menu was, but I’m sure it wasn’t braised pheasant,” she said.

The sad thing about this story is that many people will say, "Yeah, get those rich bastards! Charge 'em double! Let 'em know what's coming; we're gonna strip away their ill gotten gains!"

Which means that this story is exactly what President Obama and his evil Progressive henchmen want you to read, because they are counting on ramping up envy among people of different economic ranks -- class envy -- in order to build support for their agenda.

Of course, if we tax the rich and bill them double for their meals, who will pay the bulk of the taxes once they become poor like the rest of us? New numbers out today show that the top one percent of earners in America now pay 40.4 percent of the income taxes. (And this with the lower tax rates brought to you by the wicked George W. Bush and a Republican Congress.)

Once the rich are poor, the federal government will still have a big appetite for money, and it will turn to the middle class and the poor to make up for the loss of revenue.

That itching and twitching you feel is the target being painted 0n your back by the progressive leaders in Washington.

No free lunch, indeed.

*** ODD EXTRANEOUS OBSERVATION ***

I just noticed this is Post No. 1600. And it won't cost you a penny more.

President Obama Gives Advice He Won't Heed

In his recent visit to Africa, specifically Ghana, President Obama exhorted that nation to adopt business friendly policies.

According to the White House transcripts, he said:

No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.

The federal corporate rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest corporate tax rates among developed nations. The president and his economic team have said the tax should be higher. Why?

There are many who would argue that the takeover of two of the Big Three American auto companies is an example where the "rule of law" gave way to the brutality of unelected bureaucrats and judges establishing new ownership and new rules. I would agree with the president: this is not democracy, it is tyranny, even if we occasionally sprinkle an election.

What is good for Ghana ought to be just as good for the United States, don't you think?

How Do You Make a Millionaire Disappear?

There is at least one rule of thumb upon which conservatives, liberals and libertarians can agree:

If you want less of a certain type of activity, you tax it. If you want more, you reduce or eliminate taxes upon it (or you extend a tax relief "credit.")

That's one of the reasons anti-smoking advocates support higher taxes on cigarettes. Make it tougher on 'em.

It's why anti-drinking advocates want higher taxes on beer and alcohol. Discourage them.

Postal workers can tell you, the more the rate for a postage stamp has climbed over the years, the more innovative alternate ways people have found to send their important messages.

So guess what happened in one year after the State of Maryland imposed a new "millionaire tax" on its wealthy citizens?

Maryland plan to tax millionaires backfires

A year ago, Maryland became one of the first states in the nation to create a higher tax bracket for millionaires as part of a broader package of maneuvers intended to help balance the state's finances and make the tax code more progressive.

But as the state comptroller's office sifts through this year's returns, it is finding that the number of Marylanders with more than $1 million in taxable income who filed by the end of April has fallen by one-third, to about 2,000. Taxes collected from those returns as of last month have declined by roughly $100 million.

Oops! When you 1,000 of your millionaires move across state lines -- a fairly simple task in tiny Maryland -- you quickly re-learn our formula previously stated.

Admitting it, however, might take a bit longer.

... state officials insist that it's too early to determine if that has occurred and whether any exodus would even have a discernible impact on the state's overall budget.

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt.

90% Political Kabuki: Is There a Hidden Agenda?

Is there a hidden agenda behind the 90 percent tax on the AIG bonuses?

That's what Larry Kudlow is wondering. Kudlow not only is an economist, he plays one on TV as well (CNBC, "Kudlow & Company).

Note that the $250,000 cut-off point for the tax is the same line drawn in the sand in Obama’s budget for tax hikes on investors and successful earners. The president is proposing a tax rate of 40 percent, not 90 percent. But connecting the dots between Speaker Pelosi and Pres. Obama, it will be interesting to see if the president dares sign this bill.

And even though the 90 percent tax is a reaction to the AIG bonus fiasco, you have to wonder if the very-liberal-left House Democrats have a much broader agenda: to completely overturn the supply-side tax cuts of Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.

Kudlow explains past American tax history. Most people have only a vague idea of how high tax rates were for decades.

Following WWI, the Harding-Coolidge-Mellon Republicans returned the country to tax normalcy by reducing Woodrow Wilson’s 75 percent wartime tax to 25 percent — thus triggering the roaring growth of the 1920s. Then came the Depression, spawned in large part by Herbert Hoover and FDR, who raised the top tax rate to 63 percent, 70 percent, and finally 94 percent.

The Robert Taft Republican Congress elected in 1946 lowered those tax rates, but they later bounced back to 91 percent, where they held until JFK proposed sweeping tax reform in the 1960s. The top tax rate was reduced to 70 percent, igniting the 1960s boom — until it was undone by the inflationary Fed and Nixon’s de-linking of the dollar from gold. But Pres. Reagan slashed the top tax rate all the way down to 28 percent. This launched a multi-decade boom, with the top rate not straying far from Reagan’s vision.

So is AIG the excuse the liberals were looking for to launch the first stage of their tax-reform rocket? After all, more evidence is emerging that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats -- knew of the bonus program weeks, if not months, ago. Certainly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who helped write the AIG rules last year when he was at the Fed in New York, should have known.

If there was no real surprise, and no real hurry since any tax hike doesn't get collected until 2010 anyway, doesn't this all seem like political kabuki? We are being driven into a populist uproar so that progressives have an excuse to punish "the rich."

Please, if you value your bank account, read Kudlow's piece and think about it.

A Presidential Glimpse of the Future of Your Tax Bill

Your taxes are going up very soon.

How do I know this?

All I had to do was watch President Obama last night and listen to his words.

How much will they go up? That will depend upon Congress, and we have no guarantee that if they decide you should pay more than someone else - even up to 90 percent -- that Mr. Obama will go to bat for you. Or even whether he agrees with the idea of equal protection under the law.

How do I know this?

All I had to do was watch President Obama last night and listen to his words.

Here's Jay Leno, discussing HR 1586, which passed the House on Thursday, 328-93.

LENO: Today they passed this thing that says we're going to tax 90 percent of these bonuses. And the part that scares me is, I mean, you're a good guy –- if the government decides they don't like a guy, all of a sudden, hey, we’re going to tax you and then, boom, and it passes. I mean, that seems a little scary as a taxpayer, they can just decide ... (commercial break) ...

Before the break I mentioned that they had just passed this new bill which will tax them 90 percent -- and I said it was frightening to me as an American that Congress, whoever, could decide, I don't like that group, let's pass a law and tax them at 90 percent."

How does the president respond to this question? Does he put his (and our) fears to rest?

President Obama: Well, look, I understand Congress' frustrations, and they're responding to, I think, everybody's anger. But I think that the best way to handle this is to make sure that you've closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn. And what happened here was the money has already gone out and people are scrambling to try to find ways to get back at them. The change I'd like to see in terms of tax policy is that we have a system, going back to where we were back in the 1990s, where you and I who are doing pretty well pay a little bit more to pay for health care, to pay for energy, to make sure that kids can go to college who aren't as fortunate as our -- as my kids might be. Those are the kinds of measured steps that we can take. But the important thing over the next several months is making sure that we don't lurch from thing to thing, but we try to make steady progress, build a foundation for long-term economic growth. That's what I think the American people expect."

No, he does not address Leno's question, not even indirectly. Mr. Obama does not say whether he is for or against a 90 percent tax on guys "they don't like."

But he does say that tax policy needs to change so that "you and I who are doing pretty well pay a little bit more" to pay for health care, energy, college for poor kids.

"Measured steps." By whose measurement? Congress? According to their measurement, a 90 percent tax on the evil, undeserving rich is perfectly fine, and no problem if state and local governments want to grab the other 10 percent.

Tax laws originate in the House of Representatives, then are debated and passed in the U.S. Senate. This is Congress. If we cannot count on a responsible, just Congress, we have to look for a responsible, just President.

There is no evidence, yet, that we have one.

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NOTE: You can read the entire transcript of last night's "Tonight Show" HERE.

Get Rid of Sales Taxes on Groceries

I'd like to weigh in on the proposal to take sales taxes off of groceries in Oklahoma.

You betcha.

Not only does the tax on groceries hit the poorest the hardest, but the case for keeping the tax automatically assumes that the money saved by anyone, rich or poor, will not be spent.

That's a stupid argument. Sooner or later the state will get its cut of the revenues, and if the money helps the economy, the likelihood is that tax revenues will grow, later if not sooner.

It's the moral thing to do.