Salisbury, MD: Your Attention is Needed

To all kilbirnie residents:

 

A very important issue was brought to those attending our Spring General Meeting, Tuesday, march 16, 2016.

 

Large industrial chicken houses in Wicomico County, Maryland Neighborhoods.

 

A process is currently in motion to put a massive industrial-sized house operation at the northwest corner of Walston switch and Shavox Roads.

 

At least four to eight 60-foot by 600-foot chicken houses are planned, which if approved would result in millions of chickens processed each year and thousands of trucks transporting chickens on Walston Switch and Shavox roads.

 

there is a “Protect the Paleo Channel” Public Forum, which will be held March 22, 2016 at 6 p.m. at the Wicomico youth and Civic Center to address this issue.

 

CBO stuns! ‘Rich’ pay 106% of income taxes

A new Congressional Budget Office study has torn in hole in yet another one of President Obama’s insistent claims about the way things are.

The Congressional Budget Office study, “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010, ” shows that the top 40 percent of households, based on pre-tax income, paid a remarkable 106.2 percent of the nation’s income tax in 2010. Meanwhile, households in the bottom 40 percent paid “negative income tax,” receiving an average of $18,950 in government transfer payments while paying no federal income tax.

Read more here.

UNBELIEVABLE ABUSE OF POWER – The IRS Conservative Targeting Scandal in Five Minutes

Here’s What’s Included in Maryland’s Controversial ‘Rain Tax’

On the heels of Maryland’s decision to enact tough new gun laws, the ironically nicknamed state (the “Free State”) will now impose a so-called “rain tax” on its residents.

The “storm management fee,” passed by the state legislature in 2012, will go into effect following a decree from Democrat Gov. Martin O’Malley.

But first, a little background [via the The Gazette]:

In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion.

And where do we get the $14.8 billion? By taxing so-called “impervious surfaces,” anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax.

The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1.

The 10 areas affected by the “rain tax” include Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll, Hartford, Charles, Frederick, Baltimore counties, and Baltimore city.

“Fees will be calculated on the surface area of properties as the theory is that roofs, driveways and carparks create more potential for drainage problems and water contamination,” Metro explains. “Councils are supposed to determine how much to charge per square foot, but the fee depends on the size of the building and surrounding paved surfaces.”

Read more here.

Iowa Community College Uses Taxpayer Funds for Conference on How to Attack Conservatives and Christians

An upcoming conference being held at the Des Moines Community College will use taxpayer dollars to hold a breakout session on how to attack conservatives and Christians.

Here’s the description of the course from the conference website:

Young America’s Foundation broke the story:

A Young Americans for Freedom chapter is demanding its school to pull funding from an upcoming LGBT conference, claiming a bias against conservatives and Christians.

Des Moines Community College student Jake Dagel, who chairs the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, is opposing the 8th Annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) Youth and is calling for the school to pull its $1,000 sponsorship during a press conference announcing his chapter’s position. Dagel claims that conservatives and Christians will be bullied at the event.

“Any conference or event that attacks individuals for their beliefs is not diversity,” Dagel told the Iowa Republican. “We, the DMACC Young Americans for Freedom…believe that he LGBT community has every right to host this conference due to their First Amendment rights. However, as long as the conference hosts workshops that attack individuals, we will demand that DMACC revoke its sponsorship of tuition and taxpayer money from this conference.”

Read more here.

Dems on Debt Ceiling: No Cuts, More Taxes

With the fiscal cliff deal signed into law, the nation’s attention now turns to the debt ceiling debate, scheduled to hit in the next two months. As America reaches the debt ceiling yet again – an unbelievable $16.4 trillion debt ceiling needs another increase in order to allow us to borrow more cash to pay our bills – Republicans insist that we finally begin dealing with our spending problem. That, of course, was the purpose of the fiscal cliff deal in the first place: to preserve as many of the Bush tax rates as possible, consider tax rates a finished issue, and move on to spending cuts. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on ABC’s This Week, “The tax issue is finished, over, completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is: what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future? And that’s our spending addiction.”

Not so fast.

The bullies in the Democratic Party have no intention of cutting a single dollar. Instead, they want to tighten their stranglehold on the windpipes of job producers and entrepreneurs. This morning, virtually every Democrat on virtually every Sunday show said the same thing: no cuts, more taxes. So much for the Republican attempt to take the tax discussion off the table.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led the way, telling CBS’ Face the Nation that the historically enormous tax increases just enshrined in law aren’t enough: “The President had originally said he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue. He took it down to $1.2 trillion as a compromise in this legislation. We get $620 billion, very significant, high-end tax, changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent, but that is not enough on the revenue side.” Pelosi said that the Obama regime had already made cuts to social programs like Medicare – a position the Obama re-election campaign denied repeatedly. She added that there would be no change to Medicare’s eligibility age, and wouldn’t allow cost of living adjustments to Social Security payments. And she concluded that any link between raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending wouldn’t happen: “I don’t think those two things should be related.” She went so far as to say that she’d unilaterally raise the debt ceiling in violation of the Constitution if she were president.

Read more here.

Obama: I Want all Of YOUR Money

President Barack Obama said he’s willing to consider more spending cuts to lower the deficit, as long as they’re coupled with more tax reforms.

Using Saturday’s weekly address to praise Congress’ last-minute deal to avert the “fiscal cliff,” Obama said it’s “just one more step” in the larger effort to boost the economy and reduce federal deficits. He said this week’s deal raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans while preventing a middle-class tax hike that could have thrown the country back into recession.

“I believe we can find more places to cut spending without shortchanging things like education, job training, research and technology all which are critical to our prosperity in a 21st century economy,” Obama said, speaking from Hawaii where he is finishing his holiday vacation with his family. “But spending cuts must be balanced with more reforms to our tax code. The wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations shouldn’t be able to take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren’t available to most Americans.”

Obama fired a warning shot to members of Congress over what’s shaping up to be the next big partisan battle: the debt ceiling, which must be dealt with by the end of February.

“One thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up,” he said. “If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic. The last time Congress threatened this course of action, our entire economy suffered for it. Our families and our businesses cannot afford that dangerous game again.”

See more here.

Bosses: Don’t blame us for smaller checks

Everyone’s paycheck is about to take a hit, and it’s not the boss’ fault. But some business owners say it’s a tough talk to have.

The rate of workers’ payroll taxes, which fund Social Security, has been 4.2% for the past two years. As of Jan. 1, it’s back to 6.2%, on the first $113,700 in wages.

That forced Mike Brey, who owns four Hobby Works shops near Washington, D.C., to notify his store managers about the upcoming change during a conference call Monday. He called the experience uncomfortable. “These are the people who can least afford it,” Brey said.

Brey said he can’t raise compensation to ease the pain. Enduring the recession meant cutting his own salary, firing workers, taking on half a million dollars in debt and raiding his own 401(k).

“Any business that survived the recession did so by digging a big hole,” Brey said. “We can’t dig any deeper.”

Payroll taxes are key for financing Social Security, and the break of the past two years has forced the government to replenish the funds with borrowed money. The tax break was always meant to be temporary.

Workers earning the national average salary of $41,000 will receive $32 less on every biweekly paycheck. The higher the salary (up to $113,700), the bigger the bite, but business owners say their lower wage employees will feel it most.

Deborah Koenigsberger, who owns the Noir et Blanc fashion store in Manhattan, has yet to have the talk with her only part-time employee, a college student.

Read more here.

Rand Paul accuses Democrats of raising taxes just to ‘stick it to those rich people’

In a passionate Monday speech on the Senate floor, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul railed against the notion of raising taxes on the wealthy, and expressed doubts that doing so in a “fiscal cliff” deal would actually help pay off the debt at all.

“You may not get any more revenue,” the Kentucky Republican said. “You may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”

In his floor speech, Paul suggested Democrats are insisting on raising taxes on the wealthy because they “campaigned against rich people” in 2012 and “got enough envy whipped up in the country.”

Read more here.

“Democrats Are Like Bank Robbers” Who Want to Raise Taxes on Everyone