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Green and Affordable Holiday Gift Idea

Excerpt from Montana's News Station Gift ideas for a "green" Christmas

Saving money is a top priority for many of us this holiday season, but you can still give gifts that save the environment, too.

Remember when you were a kid, and you made coupons for chores or services as gifts because they were free? Well, promising to shovel the sidewalk and mow the lawn, or even take care of the recycling, are very green gifts to give this Christmas. And even if you're an adult now, those coupons are still free.

And you can still go "green" without putting too big of a dent in your wallet.

For instance, why wrap a CD when you can take your loved one to an actual concert? Gifts of an experience are more personal, can cost less, and don't involve the waste of packaging. But if you still like the sound of that CD, try an iTunes gift certificate. They're available everywhere and they eliminate shipping and packaging.

Gift baskets are a great way to give your green gifts a personal touch...and they can cost as little or as much as you're willing to spend. And if you use recycled, reclaimed, organic, and/or natural products that makes your gift even more green.

You can do any kind of combination you want; for instance, you can simply raid the natural and organic section at the local grocery store.

McCain Kudlow Interview - Keep Taxes Low Help the Economy

Excerpt from An Interview with Senator McCain by Larry Kudlow

McCain: Well, I try to talk about them more often. A lot of the people that come, frankly, are people that are having trouble staying in their homes, keeping their jobs, etcetera. But I think it goes back to all this business of Sen. Obama’s view of “fairness.” When Charlie Gibson said, why would you want to raise capital-gains taxes when you know it will decrease revenue? And he said in “fairness.” And he told Joe the Plumber — Joe the Plumber got the message through better, what we’ve been trying to do this whole campaign. [Obama] wants to “spread the wealth around.” That takes from the investor class. That takes money from one group of Americans and gives it to another.

Now that signal has been very clear. And I think people ought to pay attention to it, because it’s been tried before in other countries, and policies of other left-liberal administrations. It doesn’t work, and it’s bad for America. We want to encourage the investor class, and that means capital-gains and dividend taxes are low.

Kudlow: You’ve just unveiled a new tax cut on capital gains. Can you tell us about that? Because in some sense, that’s probably the most important investor class tax.

McCain: It’s the most important in many respects, Larry, and we want it low and we want it lowered. Every time — there’s one tax that there’s no argument about, that every time it’s been lowered since Jack Kennedy, we have seen an increase in revenues. Now, why anybody would argue, as Sen. Obama does, that we need to raise it, even if it’s — of course, the amount needed to raise it is varied with whatever poll he’s taken — but the point is that we want to lower it and keep it low and encourage investment, especially now in America in these difficult times.

Kudlow: But senator, what is — the current law rate is 15 percent.

McCain: Yeah, yeah.

Kudlow: You’re taking the cap-gains rate down to what?

McCain: First down to 10 percent, I would like to see it, and gradually even make it lower. Look, why should we tax people’s gains twice? Why should we tax them twice, okay? They make an investment, they should be able to get their returns on their investment. And capital gains is obviously — low capital-gains tax is probably the greatest incentive for investment that we have in America today. And so, look, I’ll be glad to listen to smart people like you, Larry, but the worst thing we can do is tell people we’re going to raise it, and that, obviously, would chill investment in America, right?

Promises of Redistribution and Spread the Wealth

David Harsanyi's article If It Redistributes Like a Duck... looks at Obama's plans to change the fundamental structure of the American economy by focusing tax codes on redistribution of wealth.

Obama is the first major presidential candidate in memory to assert that taxation's principal purpose should be redistribution.

The proposition that government should take one group's lawfully earned profits and hand them to another group -- not a collection of destitute or impaired Americans, mind you, but a still-vibrant middle class -- is the foundational premise of Obama's fiscal policy.

It was Joe Biden who said (not long ago, when he still was permitted to speak in public), "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people." The only entity that "takes" money from the middle class -- or any class for that matter -- is the Internal Revenue Service. Other than that, there is nothing to give back.

And who knew we needed such a drastic renovation of an economic philosophy we've adhered to these past 25 years (yes, counting Bill Clinton's comparatively fiscally conservative record)? Despite a recent downturn and with all the serious tribulations we face, Americans have just lived through perhaps the most prosperous and peaceful era human beings ever have enjoyed.

From 1982 until now, every arrow on nearly every economic growth chart -- every health care chart, every chart that matters -- points in one general direction, and that's up.

Obama, who, it seems, is running not only for president but also for national baby sitter/accountant/daddy/icon, ignores this success and claims he can "invest" (will that euphemism ever go away?) and disperse your money more efficiently, smartly and fairly than you can. How could any American accept the absurdity of that position?

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Promises of Redistribution and Spread the Wealth

Media's Bias At Unprecedented Levels

Diane West of Townhall.com writes in her article Media's O-Colored Glasses Blank Out Leftist Truth about a very disturbing element of this election cycle. The media has abandoned its responsibility to vet candidates, and have instead ignored a myriad of radical associates of Senator Obama's and dubbed them 'off limits' or 'dirty tricks'. The reality is that if an average person had the associations that Senator Obama has they would be classified as a security threat, and likely wouldn't even be able to attend events like the Democratic convention. It has been noted elsewhere that Senator Obama couldn't even be cleared to be his own Secret Service agent because of these associations. However, the media doesn't care, they are campaigning for their favorite candidate and these issues are dubbed off limits by the most biased media coverage in modern US history.

At the beginning of Obama's life, for example, there was "Frank," Obama's boyhood mentor who appears in his 1995 memoir "Dreams from My Father." Accuracy In Media's Cliff Kincaid has identified "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis, a known Stalinist in a Soviet-sponsored communist network in Hawaii. But Obama obscures Frank's identity in his book, even, as Sean Hannity has reported, going so far as to drop passages about "Frank" from the more recent, recorded version of the book. Why? The media never asked.

Later in Obama's life there was Mike Klonsky, an unreconstructed Marxist and erstwhile leader of an honest-to-goodness Maoist splinter group in the United States. Klonsky, like his buddy, ex-Weatherman William Ayers, spreads Marxism through education "reform." As the National Review Online's Andrew C. McCarthy reported, Obama directed nearly 2 million foundation dollars to fund Klonsky's ideas in the 1990s. More recently, Klonsky wrote a "social justice education" blog on the official Obama campaign Web site -- at least until a blog named Global Labor and Politics pointed this fact out. Klonsky's musings were summarily scrubbed from the campaign Web site in June. Why? The media never asked.

And so it goes. The assorted radicals -- from ACORN to Ayers, from anti-white Jeremiah Wright to Saudi-adviser Khalid al-Mansour to former PLO associate Rashid Khalidi -- who have peopled Obama's ideological passage from rising leftist to post-ideological cipher, have been lost in the blur to a media focused solely on their own prize: Obama in the White House.

Such focus has created a drastically blinkered journalism, particularly in these final weeks. Take the fact that the supposedly "post-racial" Obama once funded Afrocentric, race-focused education programs supported by Jeremiah "G -- - D -- - America" Wright. That was a juicy blend of hypocrisy and extremism (dug up by Stanley Kurtz), but the media just averted their eyes.

Or how about good, ol' William "America Makes Me Want to Puke" Ayers, whose own relationship with Klonsky (the Maoist mentioned above) goes back to the days of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)? Obama worked closely with Ayers to fund radical programs (such as Klonsky's) in Chicago, endorsed Ayers' work, and launched his political career in Ayers' home. This is the ideological and literal bomb-thrower Obama brushed off as just "a guy in my neighborhood." But the media saw nothing to it -- not even a piece of Obama's questionable pattern of collaboration with a series of people best described as unregenerate leftists.

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Media's Bias At Unprecedented Levels

401K's in Jeopardy

Retirement funds, particularly 401K's, are at risk. As previously mentioned in the article Democrats Discuss Taking Over People's 401K's Democrats are looking to eliminate the tax break for 401K's and to subsidize a takeover of these savings plans. Investment New reports in their article House Democrats contemplate abolishing 401(k) tax breaks point out the problems with this plan.

"From where I sit that's just crazy," said John Belluardo, president of Stewardship Financial Services Inc. in Tarrytown, N.Y. "A lot of people contribute to their 401(k)s because of the match of the employer," he said. Mr. Belluardo's firm does not manage assets directly.

Higher-income employers provide matching funds to employee plans so that they can qualify for tax benefits for their own defined contribution plans, he said.

"If the tax deferral goes away, the employers have no reason to do the matches, which primarily help people in the lower income brackets," Mr. Belluardo said.

US News and World Report has also written articles on Democrats plans to target 401K's and retirement plans if they obtain control of the presidency and congress...
Why Democrats Will Target the Investor Class in 2009

Would Obama Dems Kill 401K Plans?

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Hat Tip other bloggers covering this issue...

Smart Girl Politics Kiss Your 410K Good Bye

Ms Placed Democrat Obama's 401K Plan is Nothing More Than a Junk Bond

Say What You Really Mean Under President Obama Kiss Your 401K Goodbye, Your Net Pay Shrinks, And The Constitution Will Be Walked On Like It's His Daily Exercise Routine.

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401K's in Jeopardy

Obama's Tax Plan and Income Redistribution Hurts the Economy and the Middle Class

Senator Obama's tax plan is packaged as tax cuts for the middle class when in reality there are numerous tax increases on the middle class and on small business owners. Senator Obama's tax policies are similar to those of Herbert Hoover who raised taxes, implement isolationist policies, and drove the American economy into a massive depression. Senator Obama claims that his tax policies that give a government check to people not paying anything in income taxes are done in the name of fairness. However, the economic depression that his policies would likely trigger is fair to no one. Investor's Business Daily lays out the problems with the Obama 'spread the wealth' tax plan in their article Investors Flee From 'Change' Obama Hypes

These tax credits are devised to phase-out based on income, which will ultimately increase marginal income tax rates for middle-class workers. In other words, as you earn more, you suffer a penalty in the phase-out of these credits, which has the exact effect of a marginal tax rate increase. That harms, rather than improves, the economy.

With the bottom 40% of income earners not paying any federal income taxes, such tax credits would not reduce any tax liability for these workers. Instead, since they're refundable, they would involve new checks from the federal government.

These are not tax cuts as Obama is promising. They are new government spending programs buried in the tax code and estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

Obama argues that while these workers do not pay income taxes, they do pay payroll taxes. True, but his planned credits do not involve cuts in payroll taxes. They are refundable income tax credits designed to redistribute income and "spread the wealth."

Meantime, Obama has proposed effective tax increases of 20% or more in the two top income-tax rates, phasing out the personal exemptions and all itemized deductions for top earners, as well as raising their tax rates.

He wants a 33% increase in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, an increase of 16% to 32% in the top payroll tax rate, reinstatement of the death tax with a 45% top rate, and a new payroll tax on employers estimated at 7% to help finance his health insurance plan. He's also contending for higher tariffs under his protectionist policies.

Finally, he would increase corporate taxes by 25%, though American businesses already face the second-highest marginal tax rates in the industrialized world, thus directly harming manufacturing and job creation while weakening demand for the dollar.

Obama argues disingenuously that his tax increases would only affect higher-income workers and "corporate fat cats." But it is precisely these top marginal tax rates that control incentives for savings, investment, entrepreneurship, business expansion, jobs and economic growth. While he wants to tax the rich, the burden will fall on the poor and the middle class.

Obama's Tax Plan and Income Redistribution Hurts the Economy and the Middle Class

IBD: Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

Investor's Business Daily's article Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism is definitely worth a read. An exerpt follows...

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.

And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.

"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.

In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

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IBD: Barack Obama's Stealth SocialismIBD: Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism