Moe Lane

I recognize that this news from the National Review is a bit of a disaster for political scientists:

As the din of America’s falling headfirst over the fiscal cliff reverberates across the nation, the Obama administration is quietly killing a key economic metric that tells how, and how many, people are voting with their feet. Since 1991 the Internal Revenue Service has been compiling statistics on filers’ addresses, which the agency’s Statistics of Income division uses to show who is moving into and out of every county and state in the nation. As you’d expect, the IRS also knows the aggregate income levels of those who move. So the movements of the most fundamental productive components of the economy — taxpayers — can be analyzed by journalists and economists, or could until now.

The IRS and the U.S. Census Bureau (which provides technical support in reporting tax migration data) have not made an official announcement as to why the program is being discontinued.

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I was on a conference call today with Governor Bobby Jindal and former Governor Tim Pawlenty; they are both currently on a bus tour of Pennsylvania and Ohio for the benefit of the Romney campaign.  We had an opportunity to ask questions; and, seeing as these two states are both Republican-controlled (due at least in part to the 2010 backlash against Obamacare), I asked Governor Jindal about whether he had some advice to the state governments about signing up for the proposed expansion of Medicaid, now that it would be voluntary on the states’ part.

Governor Jindal’s advice was, essentially: don’t. Audio below:

Download audio here

To summarize the Governor’s response – and with the caveat that Jindal doesn’t actually want to tell other states what to do – Louisiana will not signing on to the Medicaid expansion, for three reasons:

1. It will add a 3.7 billion expense over first ten years for Louisiana taxpayers alone.
2. It will remove 100, 000 people from private insurance and putting them into Medicaid.
3. It will not in fact even create jobs; it will just create a new entitlement program.

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It has it all: the truth of the basic situation (Obamacare is a TAX), the willingness of Barack Obama to admit it (he is NOT), and the way that this entire situation is leaving the taste of ash in the mouths of more perceptive liberals everywhere (they REALLY didn’t want to get limits on the Commerce Clause*).  Pretty good cartoon.

Moe Lane

*To reference AoSHQ: I understand a certain skepticism towards Congress is warranted at all times; but, really, there was a reason why the administration avoided admitting that it was a tax in the first place.

And that affects profoundly the question of how to get rid of it. Mickey Kaus is correct, and Ryan Lizza & David Frum are wrong on this: the only reason that Obamacare was not cast down was because the US Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the so-called ‘individual mandate’ was constitutional if it was considered to be a tax.  The US Supreme Court also decided, 5-4, that the so-called ‘individual mandate’ was not Constitutional if done under the Commerce Clause.  So anyone who wants to argue that the Obamacare health tax is not actually a tax must also admit that Obamacare is unconstitutional.  Supporters of Obamacare do not get to have it both ways.  The Supreme Court has ruled that Obamacare’s centerpiece is a half trillion dollar tax hike on the middle class.  This is a thing that has happened.  And it means, among other things, that the Democrats’ threat of a filibuster is an empty one when it comes to repealing it next January.  We have a Senate majority, we can remove the health tax.  Simple as that.

DO NOT LET THE OTHER SIDE GET AWAY WITH PRETENDING OTHERWISE.  I understand fully why the Democrats don’t want to campaign on the position that their ‘signature’ accomplishment is a horrific, promise-breaking middle class tax hike; it’s only slightly better than campaigning on a promise to give kittens leprosy.  But that’s the Democrats’ problem, not ours.  All we have to do is figure out new ways to keep the gloating albatross around their collective neck until the election.  And one way to do that is to never, ever, ever let any apologist for the Democrats and/or Barack Obama get away with pretending that Obamacare [can be constitutional without being] a tax. If they get upset about that… good.  That means that what you’re doing is working.

Karma.  It’s what’s for breakfast.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

[Since updated for clarity.]

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(Via Hot Air Headlines) I’m putting both of those terms in quotes for different reasons. To begin with (and in reverse order), they’re not ‘tax cuts.’ The tax cuts were done years ago. What the administration is flirting with doing is raising tax rates to pre-Bush levels, in the middle of a sour economy and looming inflation.  I know that the Democrats would like to pretend otherwise, but I’m not obliged to help them.  And ‘temporary’ is one of those fascinating political terms of art that mean their opposite: there is nothing so permanent as an officially ‘temporary’ policy, as we’re starting to see now.

Moving along, David Axelrod today confirmed to the National Journal that the administration was caving on raising taxes.  Admittedly, he was trying to make it sound like the administration was not caving, but that strategy only works when your target audience lacks the mother-wit to click through on links*.  Here’s what HuffPo reported: (more…)

He won’t even have to pay the money back.

I’ll need to remember this one if I ever have issues with my own state taxes:

Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel calls Maryland home for tax break

Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel may call himself a life-long Bronx resident, but he has also called Maryland his primary residence for years to get a local tax break that state officials have just squashed.

Engel, who rents an apartment back in his district, also owns a $1 million house with his wife in the well-off Washington suburb of Potomac, Md. – a property that has been afforded $7,000 in tax breaks since he bought it in 1993, The Associated Press reported.

The NYDN article goes on to give Engel’s claim that he wasn’t trying to defraud anyone – which is interesting, given this New York Times article on the subject:
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This site should be interesting, both for people who live in Atlanta and people who want to see how you go about organizing some protests against this debt bill that we’ve been saddled with.

Here are some tips on organizing a demonstration.

Michelle Malkin is collecting her own links to demonstrations: of most immediate interest is the one in Chicago. Also, see this article on the topic, which includes handy quotes from a liberal activist who sneers at people like YOUR MOTHER for being upset about Obama indulgently signing the Democrats’ pork wish list.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who should have linked to his book.

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