Saturday, April 6, 2013

The Obama Hunt for Revenues

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the Obama Administration is now planning on major new taxes on: 1) cigarettes; and 2) IRA accounts.

Increasing the taxes on cigarettes goes after the poorest demographic in America.  In his continuing war on the lower middle income Americans, Obama plans to raise what is probably the most regressive tax in existence -- the cigarette tax.

For balance, one supposes, Obama intends to break the long standing promises of IRA accounts.  IRA accounts are a special target of the Obama Administration, because IRA's are the main avenue that individuals use to provide savings for their retirement.  Not content to let social security run out of money in the next generation, Obama now plans to steal the private savings that individuals have accumulated by abstaining from consumption and saving for their future.

There are no limits to the duplicity and meanness that characterizes the Obama Administration.  These proposals are just more of the same.  Just as the minimum wage laws make it a criminal offense to provide jobs for the poorest amongst us, the cigarette tax punishes the poorest Americans and the attack on IRA's is an assault on individual thrift.

Meanwhile another "green jobs" project funded with $ 200 million in Obama Administration funds is going belly up.  Fisker, a maker of electric cars, with a huge credit line from the US Government, is laying off 150 of its employees (60 percent of its workforce) in order to conserve cash for Obama-friendly wealthy shareholders.  The company still has the ability to draw another $370 million from government coffers as it slides into bankruptcy.  Another transfer from the poor and from the savers to Obama's wealthy friends.