August 1 Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor:

Wow! A ‘Pants on Fire’ rat­ing for each of three claims about “Obama’s health care plan” in a July 25th let­ter to the edi­tor. Is this a record?

First, the alle­ga­tion of a 3.8% tax on the entire pro­ceeds of all home sales: Forbes, an Amer­i­can busi­ness mag­a­zine, pub­lished a piece which said of this claim: “It is the unfounded rumor that never dies. It is an urban myth. It is the rev­enue equiv­a­lent of death panels.”

The April 2012 Forbes arti­cle went on to say that only cou­ples who earn more than $250,000 per year (about 5% of the pop­u­la­tion) will have to pay the tax. Also, the first $500,000 in profit from the sale of a home is exempt from the tax. The pro­ceeds are not tax­able – only that por­tion of profit above $500,000. Forbes gave this exam­ple: “A cou­ple that bought a house for $100,000 and sold it for $599,000 would owe no tax, even under the health law.” Why? Because the cou­ple only made a $499,000 profit on the sale, all of which is exempt. National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors Direc­tor of Tax Pol­icy, Linda Goold, said, “it [the 3.8% tax] will never affect any­one with less than $200,000 of income ($250,000 for a cou­ple).” Poli­ti­fact rates the 3.8% tax rumor Pants on Fire!

Sec­ond, the claim of a 1% tax on all bank trans­ac­tions: In 2010, Rep. Chaka Fat­tah of Penn­syl­va­nia offered a “Debt Free Amer­ica Act” to elim­i­nate the National Debt. It would have replaced the Fed­eral income tax on indi­vid­u­als with a trans­ac­tion tax. No com­mit­tee took action on the bill and it died at the end of the 111th Con­gress. In the next ses­sion of Con­gress, Rep. Fat­tah intro­duced the bill again, this time with excep­tions for “any deposit into a per­sonal account of an indi­vid­ual” and for “any trans­fer between accounts of the tax­payer.” This bill couldn’t find co-sponsors and died in com­mit­tee. Poli­ti­fact New Jer­sey rated this rumor Pants on Fire, say­ing, “Obama – and his finan­cial team – have noth­ing to do with the legislation.”

Third, the claim that Hillary Clin­ton will sign a UN treaty that will some­how help our pres­i­dent “who wants to take our firearms away from us:” Poli­ti­fact Texas says, “This claim runs so sub­stan­tially counter to real­ity, it’s ridicu­lous. Pants on Fire!”

Here’s why this rumor is so ridicu­lous: (a) inter­na­tional treaties must receive approval of two-thirds of the Sen­ate. Fifty-eight sen­a­tors have writ­ten let­ters to Pres­i­dent Obama and Sec­re­tary of State Clin­ton say­ing that they will not sup­port a treaty which “in any way reg­u­lates the domes­tic man­u­fac­ture, pos­ses­sion or sales of firearms or ammu­ni­tion,” (b) in the unlikely event that the Sen­ate did rat­ify such a treaty, the U. S. Supreme Court, in a 1957 deci­sion, Reid v. Covert, ruled that the Con­sti­tu­tion super­sedes inter­na­tional treaties rat­i­fied by the U.S. Sen­ate. Finally, © the Supreme Court, just four years ago, ruled that the D.C. hand­gun ban vio­lated res­i­dents’ rights under the Sec­ond Amend­ment. Nei­ther the Sen­ate nor the Supreme Court will per­mit new restric­tions on Sec­ond Amend­ment rights.

Edward Tay­lor, Mount Gilead

www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2012/04/02/there-is-no-obamacare-tax-on-most-home-sales-really/

www.factcheck.org/2012/04/realtors-the-3–8-sales-tax-and-247-medicare-premiums/

www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/ 2011/feb/01/3–8-percent-sales-tax-real-estate-health-care/

www.ksefocus.com/billdatabase/clientfiles/172/8/1437.pdf [A 10 page brochure, The 3.8% Tax Real Estate Sce­nar­ios & Examples]

www.factcheck.org/2010/09/1-transaction-tax/

www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/ 2012/may/16/chain-email/barack-obama-advisers-recommend-one-percent-fee-al/

www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2012/may/17/craig-james/craig-james-says-barack-obama-and-hillary-clinton-/

factcheck.org/2012/06/still-no-international-gun-ban-treaty/

Dear Edi­tor,

In your July 18, 2012 Let­ters to the Edi­tor, a writer made a state­ment about another cor­re­spon­dent that they must have got­ten their infor­ma­tion on Oba­macare from the Tea Party or Fox news.

Left wing social­ist have tagged the Tea Party as a group of rad­i­cals, when in real­ity, their the result of a grass root assem­bly of real Amer­i­cans wish­ing to con­tinue liv­ing under God and by the constitution.

As far as the news is con­cerned, FOX is more fair then ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN com­bined. Theres not a day or pro­gram goes by that they don’t allow both sides an oppor­tu­nity to express their views.

The oth­ers have one view, and if that’s all you watch, thats the one you’ll believe. If you watch the entire group peri­od­i­cally, it allows you to use your abil­ity to rec­og­nize what each is try­ing to express.

If you are a die hard Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat then noth­ing will deter your way of think­ing regard­less of the outcome.

The fol­low­ing facts should be con­sid­ered before mak­ing any vot­ing decisions.

All peo­ple who vote for Obama are not free­load­ers but all free­load­ers will vote for him. They want “Obama money” but let me inform them, its “tax­payer money” and with­out jobs, there’s “no money.”

Unem­ploy­ment has remained at 8.2% for over 41 months but in real­ity is closer to 15% which for longevity is the worst since the great depression.

In 1992 there were 3.5 mil­lion peo­ple on dis­abil­ity and today there’s over 9 mil­lion. More peo­ple applied for dis­abil­ity than were employed in June 2012. There are 1 in 7 peo­ple on food stamps and 70% on gov­ern­ment assis­tance. The present admin­is­tra­tion through t.v ads has spent over 3 mil­lion dol­lars of tax­payer money adver­tis­ing peo­ple how to apply for food stamps.

They also sent over 2 bil­lion dol­lars to 3rd world coun­tries to study cli­mate change. I’m sure they’ll be trans­par­ent about those results.

Stim­u­lus of 13 mil­lion dol­lars was sent to China to pro­duce windmills.

Mil­lions more was sent to Find­land to pro­duce elec­tric cars.

There’s cur­rently 30 jobs bills being enforced against employ­ers which will be a deter­rent in their abil­ity to hire workers.

Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich which would gen­er­ate about 85 bil­lion dol­lars but based on the gov­ern­ments spend­ing rate, that would last 8 1/2 days.

When that fails, guess who’s going to pay then?

At the present time, 49% of peo­ple pay no fed­eral tax at all.

On Fri­day July 13, Obama made the state­ment that the Amer­i­can pub­lic is too igno­rant to under­stand what his inten­tions are.

Obama has done every­thing in his power to divide this coun­try pit­ting black on white, rich on poor, unions on work­ers, and if he is allowed to con­tinue the results will be catastrophic.

As far as Oba­macare and, regard­less of what any­one thinks, it will be the largest tax in his­tory, very begin­ning and it has 21 hid­den taxes no one is told about.

Obama has done noth­ing for the bet­ter­ment of this coun­try and never will unless he’s forced to. For those who believe he has, or ever will, I say hold on to that “dream” because thats all it will ever be. A dream.

He refuses to pro­tect our bor­ders and our D.O.J (Dept. of Jokes) files suit against states when they attempt to enforce bor­der laws. It’s all a ploy to get more votes so he can con­tinue to destroy our already decay­ing soci­ety. We are not too big too fail.

He hasn’t met with our jobs com­mit­tee in over 6 months.

He passed a “law” stat­ing, any­one using the “N” word will go to jail but turns a blind eye when Louis Farakkahn, undoubt­edly, the most racist per­son on earth makes state­ments like, “white peo­ple are the scum of the earth,” or “I’ll cre­ate a rev­o­lu­tion inside Amer­ica” and does noth­ing when Black Pan­thers intim­i­date white vot­ers at the entrance to their vot­ing polls.

Now Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago, and good friend of Obama has taken Farakkahn under his wing to fight crime in Chicago. Thats like get­ting the fox to guard the chicken house.

Unless you’ve been liv­ing under a rock for the past 3 1/2 years and no mat­ter the color of your skin, reli­gion etc., it’s time to wake up to the fact we are head­ing for a train wreck and we as Amer­i­cans will no longer rec­og­nize our coun­try as we know it now.

The afore­men­tion are not Fox or Tea Party facts but real facts.

With Obama doing some­thing stu­pid, ille­gal or racist almost daily, I could write a book by elec­tion day but will close with hope and prayer that God will bless Amer­ica again. We need all the help we can get.

Hol­lis Eastep, Mt. Gilead

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jul 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.