Author Archives: BZ

The fed collects a record amount of taxes

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DC LiesFrom CNSNews.com:

By Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) – The federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,472,542,000,000 in tax revenues through the first eleven months of fiscal 2013, which ran from Oct. 1, 2012 through the end of August, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for August.

That is up about $285 billion from the approximately $2,187,527,000,000 in taxes the government took in through August of fiscal 2012.

Despite these record tax revenues, the federal government still accumulated a $755 billion deficit in the first eleven months of fiscal 2013. Totally federal spending through the first eleven months of the fiscal year was $3.228 trillion.

At the end of last year, the president struck a deal with Republicans in Congress at the to enact legislation that increased taxes. This included pushing the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, increasing the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent, and phasing out personal exemptions and deductions starting at an annual income level of $250,000.

An additional 3.8 percent tax on dividends, interests, capital gains and royalties–that was embedded in the Obamacare law–also took effect this year.

And yet the DebtClock keeps rolling and rolling and rolling.

BZ

 

 

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Congress’s Exemption from Obamacare

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Criminals & PoliticiansFrom NationalReview.com:

Make Congress get insurance the same way the little people do? Hill denizens howl in fury.  by John Fund

Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy.

Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private.

Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that will make them the only participants in the new Obamacare exchanges to receive generous subsidies from their employer to pay for their health insurance. Angry Senate Democrats have drafted legislation that dredges up a 2007 prostitution scandal involving Vitter. The confrontation is a perfect illustration of just how wide the gulf in attitudes is between the Beltway and the rest of the country — and how viciously Capitol Hill denizens will fight for their privileges.

 In 2009, Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) decided that the principle deserved to be embedded in Obamacare, and he was able to insert a provision requiring all members of Congress and their staffs to get insurance through the Obamacare health exchanges. “The more that Congress experiences the laws it passes, the better,” said Grassley. Although his amendment was watered down before final passage to exclude committee staff, it still applies to members of Congress and their personal staffs. Most employment lawyers interpreted that to mean that the taxpayer-funded federal health-insurance subsidies dispensed to those on Congress’s payroll — which now range from $5,000 to $11,000 a year — would have to end.

 What Vitter’s opponents fear most is that this fight will penetrate the public’s consciousness. A new poll taken for Independent Women’s Voice, a conservative group, found that 92 percent of voters think Congress shouldn’t be exempted from the insurance provisions of Obamacare. Most voters blame both parties equally for the exemption, which means Republicans will also be hurt politically if it stands. “This is an issue with almost unprecedented intensity,” IWV president Heather Higgins told me. “Republicans have the choice of leading the Vitter parade for repeal or getting run over by it. To duck it will be viewed by their constituents as political malpractice.”

Please note the phrase “Democrats and Republicans alike,” above.  Both sides of the aisle believe it’s fundamentally “unfair” for them to have to abide by the fruits of their own bills.  Proving once again that, in essence, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two sides, with a smattering of exceptions.

You have to realize: those in DC are simply better than us.  Us: the American Taxpayers.  The proles, the serfs, the groundlings.

BZ

 

 

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Favorite mystery/suspense writers: not female

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Hard Boiled Cool SlutAnd, oddly enough, few if any of them are female because I don’t relate to emotions or estrogen or confusion or second-guessing or mental bullshit.  I related to testosterone.

There is, however, one female writer that I do, off the bat, critically enjoy (and then re-joy), named Chelsea Cain.  But only because she writes about her female serial killer Gretchen Lowell.

The other “cozies” or “who-dunits” or other soft-core female mystery writers I cast aside because they haven’t walked the walk or talked the talk.  I couldn’t care less about romantic novels or female mysteries.

When I began to write and submitted a draft to an FBI IA many years ago, when I actually worked for the FBI, and she said “I don’t like the cuss words,” I knew I was on to two things: 1) she was correct, she didn’t like the cuss words.  And 2) she had no idea what occurred back behind her in the various squads.

I also knew she was reacting emotionally.  And not with reality.

I knew I was, then, on to something.

I decided to take advantage of that and, since, have submitted various manuscripts for publication that have netted me dollars in the 4 figures.  Although, yes, I have been published, I am still looking for something of a breakout.  And I’m finding that, yes, the major obstacle to my breakout is with female editors and agents and houses.

Because, make no mistake, females rule the publishing word of books and houses and agents and editors.

For another very salient reason: so few males tend to read or purchase books any more.

Because many males are more interested in killing each other, joining gangs, burying their noses into iPhones or iPads or other various and sundry media devices and games.

And I’m going to take advantage of that whilst I may.

To that I end I say: buy books written by males, because those writers are a dying breed.  So goes Elmore Leonard and so goes Robert B. Parker and so goes Vince Flynn.

Goodbye to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and James Cain and George Coxe and W.R. Burnett and Mickey Spillane.

I’ll be coming out with a book within a year or so; it will likely be self-published.  If for no other reason than I don’t write to please females or the inept or the emos.  I write for no other reason than to please me and what I would care to read.

If female editors and publishers and agents pick me up; so be it.  If they don’t, I’ll simply continue to self-publish.

I’ll know why: female writers sell to female readers.  Fewer male readers = fewer male writers.

A sad state of affairs.

BZ

 

 

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