OMalley's Forum:

Click on the "Fading Heritage" image below, to take your civics test.. then compare yourself to your elected officials with the chart below.. . .. Do you think you need to study more before the next election?

Do you know more than our elected officials?

If you do, please remember these are the people telling you what light bulbs you have to use and take 40% of our wages through taxes, some of which they hide in corporate taxes.  

Are they to be now trusted with our healthcare? 

Are they to be believed about "man made global warming"?

Have some fun, take the test. Maybe your whole family, invite friends.. ??

Are You Smarter Than a Politician?

All survey respondents were asked whether they have ever engaged in any of 13 different political and civic activities. These included, for example, registering to vote, signing a petition, contacting a public official, publishing a letter to the editor, and whether they have ever been elected to a government office.

Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once. This sub-sample of officeholders yields a startling result: elected officials score lower than the general public. Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected. It would be most interesting to explore whether this statistically significant result is maintained across larger samples of elected officials.

The elected officeholders come from the ranks of Democrats (40%), Republicans (31%), Independents (21%), and those who say they belong to no party or indicate no affiliation (8%). None were asked to specify what office they held, so the proportion in which they held local, state, or federal positions is unknown.

Not all officeholders do poorly, of course. Some elected officials rank among the highest scorers. But the failure rate on the test among those who have won public office is higher (74%) than among those who have not (71%). Officeholders scored lower on all sub-themes of the test: political history, cultural institutions, foreign relations, and market economy.

In each of the following areas, for example, officeholders do more poorly than non-officeholders:

• Seventy-nine percent of those who have been elected to government office do not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the U.S.
• Thirty percent do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.
• Twenty-seven percent cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.
• Forty-three percent do not know what the Electoral College does. One in five thinks it either “trains those aspiring for higher political office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”
• Fifty-four percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Thirty-nine percent think that power belongs to the president, and 10% think it belongs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Only 32% can properly define the free enterprise system, and only 41% can identify business profit as “revenue minus expenses.”

On some questions, Americans who have held elected office do better than Americans who have not. They are a little more likely, for example, to recognize the language of the Gettysburg Address (23% to 21%) and to know that the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand into new territories was the main issue in the Lincoln–Douglas debates (25% to 20%).

Officeholders and non-officeholders find it equally difficult to identify the three branches of government. Only 49% of each group can name the legislative, executive, and judicial. 

(And you don't think you should be scared?F.O.)

 www.petitionproject.org 

According to an EPA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, for the first time ever, carbon dioxide, methane and other gases may be regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, effectively transferring American food production to foreign nations and endangering food safety.

These actions are a result of an April 2007 Supreme Court decision that concluded greenhouse gases (GHGs) meet the definition of an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. While the Supreme Court ruling addressed tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles, a decision to regulate GHG emissions for cars impacts whether other sources of GHG -including natural emissions of CO2 and methane- would need to be regulated as well.

“Because cows and hogs emit gases resulting from natural biological processes, the EPA is now considering whether or not producers may have to control those gases,” explained Alan Foutz, President of the Colorado Farm Bureau. “With the amount of livestock we have in this state, this regulation would cost the agriculture industry hundreds of millions of dollars. We simply can’t afford that.”           click image for site

Should the rule be implemented, a provision of the Act that would automatically be triggered is Title V. This requires that any entity that emits more than 100 tons of a regulated pollutant per year to obtain a permit. Should permitting be required for livestock production, the estimated annual cost to the Colorado dairy, beef and pork industries would be $20 million, $240 million, and $17 million respectively. With the tight margins that livestock producers currently operate with, this de facto tax could bankrupt livestock production across the country and make American consumers more dependent on foreign sources for their food and fiber.

The Colorado Farm Bureau earlier last week sent letters to Colorado’s Congressional delegation asking Congress to explicitly exempt the regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the Clean Air Act (CAA).

“We are obviously very concerned with the actions the EPA is considering.  The regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act would have severe financial impacts on the agriculture industry and could put America’s food security at risk,” said Foutz

Colorado Farm Bureau has also submitted comments to the EPA on their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.  

Find your voice?  Scroll up, look to the left side of the page.. click image and call the switchboard in D.C. Ask them for your representative. When connected through, ask them their stand on taxing greenhouse gases, since 95% of the greenhouse effect, "global warming", is water. Refer the representative's office to www.petitionproject.org  call them every day..

Find your voice? Too busy to do anything? Keep reading.. grin.  

How much faster will be able to retool without the brakes of our taxing success?

Are the chances diminished that we get off of foreign oil before the next "hit" to the economy if we continue to tax the capital investment needed to re-tool?  

Can this be methodolgy be replaced by taxing consumption of New Retail Goods?  

Encourage recycling by not taxing Used Goods. Tax "Green"? When you purchase used you are no longer consuming new manufacturing.

Can you list the advantages of not paying 22% to 26% higher retail prices due solely to hidden corporate taxes?  

Should we not begin questioning our need for such a system of taxation?

Should we not begin to question those assumptions that led us here?

Too many good people doing nothing?

Adding insult to injury, this 22% is paid again because the entitlement check, which we pay for, buys less due to these hidden corporate taxes. Would we even need minimum wage laws if everyone industrious enough to run their own business weren't taxed 7.6% of each employee's wages?

The higher your employer pays you, the more he has to pay Uncle. 7.6% is a lot of money when multiplied by 250,000 workers.

Just that one tax makes success of any American business, "rich CEO's or not", less achievable in a world market berift of capitalism's middle class.

We are told things have changed and we must adapt to their thinking.

The pundits of doom and gloom if we do not move hastily in a myriad of differing directions. Gay Rights, abortion and the rights of terrorists cloud the real issues before us.

Ironically in all of this bickering over wealth, the poor suffer the most.

Their chances of success are diminished by that same 22%.  That 22% may not be so much to the people reading this. But to the poor, it means the difference between a room and a bed and the streets. It means a dinner too. I've been there. I've got the tee-shirt.

The middle class is just becoming aware. The upper 50% in income pay 97% of the income tax burden. Get the word out and plainly tell your representatives that you will be voting otherwise if they do not address this issue now. Too strong?

Is the current tax code "Fair"?

If the methodoly is based on unfairness, will its outcome be unfair also?

Our tax code could be blind to class. That could be our goal.

As much as being blind to race as our Civil Rights Act encouraged America? 

Repeal the 16th Amendment and replace it with an amendment that simply states it is unconstitutional for any government local, state or federal to tax income, investments and savings. This is clearly not "the American way" as invisioned by our forefathers. What about this? Is this too much "commonsense" or "too simplistic". 

Tax what consumes our society's resources, New Retail Goods and nurture that which lifts us from poverty, economic success.

God bless,

"Father" O'Malley