1Declaration: Free Markets, Free People, Free Minds

Check out this great article.

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Why Conservatives are Happier than Liberals

By Jenna Bryner

May 7, 2008

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.

Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.

In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."

The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.

The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.

"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."

The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354424,00.html

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Check out this article about the over-burdensome income tax system for both individuals and corporations. This article acutely points out the unnecessary costs associated with the income tax system. Clearly a change is needed. To find out how check out my series about the FairTax or visit FairTax.org.

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Add this to tax bill: $207 and a day of work
Monday, April 14, 2008
By: Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Tax season became a little more taxing this year, with the average person spending more than a day and more than $200 collecting, calculating and compiling those numbers for the tax man, according to a report based on Internal Revenue Service figures.

If it's any consolation to the individual still trying to get receipts in order a day before Tuesday's filing deadline, businesses have it far worse. The National Taxpayers Union, in its annual look at the burdens of taxpaying, said the corporate cost of compliance is about $170 billion. General Electric in 2006 filed returns equivalent to 24,000 printed pages.

Congress, and not the Internal Revenue Service, is the leading culprit in this time and money increase, said the group, a nonpartisan organization that works for lower taxes and smaller government. "Congress is adding to the tax laws' complexity faster than the IRS can simplify its forms," it said.

IRS figures showed that all taxpayers, from those using the simplest 1040-EZ form to those using longer forms, spent 26.5 hours in record keeping, studying the law, and preparing and sending their forms for the 2006 tax year. That was up from 25.4 hours three years earlier.

The average out-of-pocket cost, including for those taxpayers doing their own taxes, was $207, up from $185 three years earlier. The self-employed taxpayer paid an average $444 to put his taxes together.

That takes a chunk out of the refunds most taxpayers receive. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress last week that as of March 29 it had issued about 70 million refunds, with the average refund worth $2,467. The tax agency expects to process nearly 140 million individual returns this year.

The NTU report estimated that, using an hourly compensation rate of $26, the value of time lost compiling tax returns was $92.6 billion. More directly, individual taxpayers spend almost $28 billion on software, tax preparers, postage and other out-of-pocket costs.

The $170 billion compliance cost for corporations represented 43 percent of corporate income taxes collected in fiscal year 2007.

One reason for this annual agony is that tax law keeps getting more complex. The instruction book for Form 1040 has grown from four pages in 1945 to 117 pages in 2000 and 155 pages last year. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation's general explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 2006-2007 session of Congress ran to 841 pages, up from 593 pages for the previous Congress.

Congress is marking Tax Day with several initiatives to make paying taxes simpler or fairer. On Monday the House is considering a bill to bar federal agencies from awarding contracts to people or companies that have failed to pay their federal taxes.

Later in the week, the chamber will vote on a bill that, among other provisions, eliminates a requirement for individuals to keep records of calls made on employer-provided cell phones and stops foreign contractors from using foreign subsidiaries to evade Social Security and other employment taxes. That legislation would also terminate a program under which the IRS contracts with private debt collection companies to pursue smaller scale tax evaders.

In the Senate, Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, are promoting a bill that would require the IRS to allow all Americans to file their returns electronically free of charge. They say this would save taxpayers some $1.2 billion a year.

But Congress also made life for the IRS more difficult this year by waiting until last December to fix the alternative minimum tax, a levy intended to affect only a small number of very wealthy people that could have hit more than 20 million this year. That slowed down the processing of some refunds while the IRS adjusted its computers.

The IRS also was forced to be as efficient as possible this year because it was tasked with paying checks owed Americans as part of the economic stimulus package passed in January. People should start receiving those payments, of up to $600 and $1,200 respectively for individuals and couples with another $300 per child, early next month.

The independent IRS Oversight Board in a recent report commended the IRS for across-the-board improvements in such areas as customer service and enforcement of tax law.

But it also noted that the estimated tax gap of $290 billion — the difference between what is legally owed and what is actually paid every year — averages out to about $2,200 per individual tax return. That, it said, is "an enormous burden for the average taxpayer and one that should not be tolerated by honest taxpayers."

Originally published at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24112908

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I recently received an email pointing me to this article appearing in the American Thinker writer by Bruce Walker. This article acutely points out the differences between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. Although I am not a conservative I do agree on a majority of their positions because they believe in the ability of people to succeed on their own. I am not a Republican but they are a far cry better than any Democrat.

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The Lawyers' Party
by Bruce Willis
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_lawyers_party.html

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Benson, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.

This years presidential election may be on of the most followed elections in US history. In what should be a clear cut Democratic presidency because of poor economic indicators, an unpopular war, and the most unpopular president in history the Democratic candidates can't take an upper hand and keep fighting each other instead of Republican nominee, John McCain.

The 2008 Presidential Election will have its two major parties, the "Big Two" once again vying for power, but it will not be an election between conservatives and liberal. This will be an election between moderates and liberal fascists (yes...I borrowed that term from Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism) and will feature a variety of other third party candidates from Libertarians to statists.

Today's "Big Two" (Republicans and Democrats) politicians are out of touch with the founding principles of our country. (Go ahead and read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and information about the signers of the Declaration. Then try reading about the over reaching British government and compare where our government is heading.) Instead of limited government, maximation of individual liberty, and self-responsibility our nominees and elected representatives preach about and enact laws that seek to minimize individual liberty by limiting choice (no more incandescent light bulbs) and increasing government intervention in our daily lives. They have clearly forgotten, or what I believe have intentionally misplaced, the idea of the most famous Chinese provers, " Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will feel himself for a lifetime."

The "Big Two" (not all politicians but a large portion of them) no longer believe in the people of this nation. Democrats are in favor of the "nanny state," welfare state, or as Neal Boortz calls it the, "I want my mommy state." Democratic candidates offer up a constant barage of rhetoric on nationalized health care, lies about global warming (without scientific evidence), and the golden oldie to blame the rich or big corporations for your problems. Republicans offer few better solutions. John McCain recently spoke to 9th war Hurricane Katrina victims promising more federal government intervention and preaching of the failures of the national level response while neglecting the lack of state, local, and personal responsibilities. There is no doubt things could have been handled much better with regards to the federal response but the primary responders state, local, and private citizens all failed to take responsibility. McCains sponsoring of the McCain-Feingold bill limiting people's freedom of speech, McCain-Kennedy bill offering amnesty for illegals, and McCain-Liberman global warming bill offer more credibility to this argument.

This leads me to one conclusion. The politicians, praised by some of you, but nothing more than mere mortals and imperfect beings like yourself believe that you are totally incapable of taking care of yourself. Look at the policies they are creating and then look at yourself and American society at large objectively. Instead of offering permanent solutions that feature individual improvement, problems need solving by more government dependency and inefficient government programs.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach and man to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime." This quote no longer applies. Self-responsibility have been eliminated and freedom of choice has been erroded. Clearly this quote no longer applies so lets update it for the time.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a man a fish a day (aka welfare and entitlements) and he will become dependent on us (government and politicians) and vote for us (politicians) forever." This has become the ideology of the "Big Two" and it will continue until the people of the United States call for change sternly in elections or mass communications with their representatives.

Don't forget that their are more than just two political parties! I firmly believe that Liberty in America can only be saved by Libertarian ideals.

In the Sunday April 20th, 2008 Opinion Page of the New York Times, an article was presented showing McCain as an irresponsible presidential candidate by wanting to cut taxes even more. McCain wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and to repeal the alternative minimum tax which would save American taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars in taxation that would be utterly wasted by an inefficient federal government on programs they have no Constitutional right to involve themselves in as it is. The opinion actually stated that these two tax cuts would reduce tax revenue to the government.

The Article points out that he wants to double the dependent exemption further reducing tax collections by $171 billion over the next 4 years, suspend the gasoline tax over the summer which would reduce taxes by $10 billion, and finally cut corporate taxes. The author of the article finally points out that McCain has given no way to make up these tax cuts except cutting out loopholes and McCain's favorite action to "cut pork-barrel" spending.

The author concludes that this is all political pandering to buy votes and McCain must go back to the drawing board to show how he would govern without adding to our fiscal problems.

Concluding with the authors opening thoughts. The author opens the article by stating the federal government will not be able to deal with problems of the future such as health care (not in the federal government jurisdiction - state and personal level), road and bridge repair (state and local level jurisdiction), and alternative energy (better handled by the free market, when the people demand it and when it can become economically viable without government subsidies it will occur).

The author of the article clearly misses the point that these issues are not in the federal governments jurisdiction (check the Constitution for your answer on this and then read the 10th Amendment, the answer to all these issues are there) and are all better left to the individual and state levels. Eliminating these costly programs would save Americans billions of dollars each year in unnecessary and inefficient government programs allowing Americans to invest more wisely and with much greater efficiency for their needs.

A little confusion seems to be out their with the Fair Tax so I will do a brief recap of the Fair Tax. The information is widely available for FairTax.org and numerous books.

The Fair Tax or HR 25 is a complete replacement of the current tax code. The Fair Tax will repeal all payroll, income, savings, investment, estate, gift, and death taxes. The Fair Tax is a 23% federal sales tax on the final purchase of any new item or service. Used items or items produced in the home are untaxed. The Fair Tax does not change any current government program like Social Security or Medicare. The only thing that changes are how taxes are collected.

Under the Fair Tax productivity and hard work are no longer penalized as taxes are no longer based off of your income. Likewise people are free to save and invest without paying taxes on the interest or resulting income from a stock, CD, or other investment related transaction.

Under the Fair Tax you will receive your full paycheck.

The Prebate:

Under the Fair Tax every citizen in the United States will receive a prebate each month to cover the taxes on spending up to the poverty level. The prebate is dependent only on family size and the current poverty level rate as determined by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (In some cases the poverty level is also dependent upon the state of residence). The prebate will be adjusted for the rate of inflation yearly in accordance with inflation changes by the poverty level.

Under that Fair Tax your income is not reported to the federal government. The only thing reported is your employment status by the company of employment to determine Social Security status.

To clarify. The Fair Tax prebate is not based on income. A single person with no children will receive $196 per month no matter their level of income. To the prebate size you would receive each month please visit FairTax.org prebate levels.

Since taxation is based on spending, those who spend more will pay more. If you don't spend above the poverty level you don't pay. A family that spends twice the poverty level will have a tax rate of 11.5 percent. As spending increases the rate of taxation will increase until the rate reaches 23% because of the prebate. Taxation is totally voluntary under the Fair Tax. Because of the prebate the Fair Tax is a progressive tax.

I hope this recap clarifies some misconceptions that have popped up about the Fair Tax.