From: Susan Kniep, President
The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Inc. (FCTO)
Website: http://ctact.org/
email: fctopresident@aol.com
860-524-6501
June 26, 2007
Welcome
to Tax Talk 105
It is apparent that we have an avid readership
by the number of news articles I have been receiving to post in Tax Talk. Keep them coming. So that I don’t overwhelm, however, if your
news article is not contained within one edition of Tax Talk, look for it in
the next. Also, for
those looking for news outside the main stream turn to the following… http://ctnewsjunkie.com.
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BREAKING
NEWS
(Click Pale Blue
Headings to Read Article)
FROM
CTNEWSJUNKIE.COM
by Christine Stuart | June 26, 2007 3:50 PM
Posted to State Capitol Governor M. Jodi Rell
has vetoed a bill that would have allowed children of undocumented workers in
Connecticut to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities.
by Christine Stuart | June 25, 2007 4:44 PM
Posted to State Capitol
After
patting themselves on the back and talking about what they did and didn’t
include in the budget, the Senate passed the two-year $36 billion spending plan
with a 33 to 1 vote on Monday.
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FROM WASHINGTONPOST.COM
(Click Pale Blue
Headings to Read Article)
CIA Releases
Documents Detailing 1970s Scandal
Archive includes assassination plots, secret drug testing
and wiretapping and spying on Americans.
By William Branigin,
6:36 p.m
ET, June 26, 2007 Washingtonpost.com
·
Papers Reveal
CIA, Mafia Link in Castro Plot
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Immigration
Debate Resumes
Senate votes to revive bill that would offer a path to
citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
Jonathan Weisman, 1:32 p.m. ET, June 26, 2007,
Washingtonpost.com
·
Guest-Worker
Program That Does Well by Migrants
·
The Recruiter:
Labor Across the Border
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US Congress Votes Database
Includes all Votes in
Congress Since 1991
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
**************
A sincere thank you
to Tom Durso, FCTO Treasurer, for alerting us to the
following article from the Wall Street Journal By Kimberley A. Strassel
Friday, June 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Pork
Project
An earmark lesson for Washington from the states: shame.
It was about a week ago that House Democrats
ran up the white flag on earmarks and begrudgingly agreed to live by their
campaign pledges to make pork requests public. It was also about a week ago
that Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a sweeping new state transparency law, which
will give his taxpayers detailed information about every state expenditure,
grant and contract. Mark the difference. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrasselpw/?id=110010244
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FINANCIAL
SETTLEMENTS
http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements_category.html?category=Financial
**************
The
Public Trough Is Bigger Than Ever
By John Stossel
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Bill Clinton once declared, "The
era of big government is over." Both Republicans and Democrats applauded.
What a joke. Government grew under Clinton, and grew even
faster under his successor. Government is so big today that more than half the
population gets a major part of its income from the state.
So says a study by economist Gary Shilling. Shilling, a Springfield, N.J.,
consultant and forecaster, says the portion of Americans feeding substantially
at the public trough stands at 52.6 percent. In 2000, it was 49.4. It seems
unbelievable that in 1950, only 28.3 percent of Americans lived off the
taxpayers. Shilling projects 60 percent by 2040.
One out of
five Americans works for some level of government or for a firm that depends on
taxpayer financing. One in five
also draws Social Security or a federal pension. That number will grow as the
baby boomers move on to Social Security, which, let's not forget, is a transfer
program.
Among other recipients of largess:
Nine million are on food stamps, 2 million received housing subsidies, and 5
million go to school on the federal taxpayer. In Shilling's reckoning,
dependents of recipients are also part of the group he calls "government
beneficiaries."
Wasn't the welfare system reformed in
1996? On the surface, yes. Cash payments are available
only for a limited time and recipients are expected to work eventually.
Millions of women once on welfare have gone to work. But the idea that the
taxpayer has gotten a break or that overall dependency has decreased is a myth.
As the AP reported: "The welfare state is bigger
than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public
aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has
plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade
ago. But other programs for the poor -- including Medicaid, food stamps and
disability benefits -- are bursting with new enrollees. The result ... is that
nearly one in six persons rely on some form of public assistance, a larger
share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades
ago."
The handouts go to the well off, too.
Farm programs and corporate subsidies benefit big farmers and big business, and
wealthy people draw large Medicare benefits. The Cato Institute says there are
nearly 1,700 federal subsidy programs spending hundreds of billions of dollars
a year.
According to Michael Tanner's "Leviathan on the Right", federal domestic
spending under President Bush has risen 27 percent in real terms, while
discretionary non-entitlement spending has gone up 4.5 percent a year. (Clinton's annual increase
was "only" to 2.1 percent.)
Who'd have thought that a Republican
president would challenge Lyndon Johnson's spending record?
Government is "that great
fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else,"
wrote Frederic Bastiat, the great laissez-faire
economist of Nineteenth-Century France.
Of course, everyone cannot live at the expense of everyone else, but people who
understand nothing about economics try, egged on by politicians looking for an
election-wining coalition.
Government has no wealth of its own.
Before it gives anything to anyone, it must take from those who produced it.
But the taking could discourage future production, leaving less to be
distributed by the politicians. Productive Americans have forged ahead despite
a constellation of transfer programs, but how long will they continue to do so?
The European welfare states are learning that producers
don't leave themselves available for milking forever. Their economies are
sluggish, and unemployment is high. Government promises exceed resources, and
citizens who were guaranteed lifelong security find their benefits shrinking.
Yet this doesn't deter our champions
of big government. Even the coming Social Security and Medicare train wrecks don't faze them.
So don't expect government to stop growing. The Washington Post reports ominously: "In
the four months since the midterm elections, the number of new lobbyist
registrations has nearly doubled to 2,232 from 1,222 in the comparable period a
year earlier."
The lobbyists go where the money and
the power is.
Thomas Jefferson said, "The
natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain
ground."
John Stossel is
an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the
Shovel--Why Everything You Know is Wrong
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Our
Thanks to FCTO Supporter Linda, for her welcomed message:
MAY YOUR TROUBLES BE LESS, YOUR BLESSINGS
MORE,
AND NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS COME THROUGH YOUR
DOOR,
HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!!