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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 25, 2007 / 13 Mar-Cheshvan

The Dems' hidden tax plans

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's easy to see the disguises that the Democratic Party is planning to don for Halloween. Not this year, but in 2009, after they have elected Hillary as president and as many as 58 Democratic senators. (Possible takeaways in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Virginia, Nebr aska, Colorado and New Mexico.)


While we can only speculate on the taxes they are planning to increase — "everything" would be a safe bet — it is becoming clear how they will dress the tax increases up to make the radical change they will, in fact, represent seem moderate and reasonable, even necessary to protect the "middle class."


Put the pieces together:


Why are the Democrats adopting a one-year patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rather than a long-term fix?


And why are liberal leaders like Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposing closing the loophole that protects private equity hedge funds? And why is Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) pushing for a broad-based fix closing capital gains treatment for all partnerships, not just for hedge funds, even though he must realize that such broad-based reform can't pass?


And why did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic leaders hail the action of the Budget Committee as representing a tax cut when all it did was to include in its long-range plans the renewal of some, but scarcely all, of the Bush tax cuts that will sunset in the next four years?


The answer is that the party is concocting an elaborate costume with which to disguise its coming mammoth tax increases.


Once the Democrats firmly control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, they will probably:


Raise the top bracket on the income tax back up to 40 percent from its current 35 percent.


Increase the Capital Gains Tax from its current 15 percent to 30 percent or, perhaps, eliminate it entirely and tax these gains as ordinary income (at 40 percent).


Double, triple or perhaps eliminate the ceiling on FICA taxes so that instead of taxing only the first $99,000 of income, the levy covers a much higher portion of earned income.


Repeal much of the rollback in estate taxes passed by Bush.


The combined effect of these increases will be horrific, and will probably trigger a recession. As Election Day 2008 nears, it is easy to anticipate massive sell-offs of stocks and real estate in anticipation of a Democratic increase in capital gains rates.


So, to induce America to swallow their tax poison, the Democrats understand the need to camouflage their intentions and hide the m in the rhetoric of middle-class tax cuts.


So here's what they'll do. They will bill their tax increases as a middle-class tax cut by including in the calculation the Bush middle-class tax cuts, which they will not permit to sunset, and also by taking credit for a long-term fix of the AMT. Together, the sums "saved" by these "tax cuts" will be gigantic, at least on paper, and will permit them to call their revenue-raising leviathan a tax reduction. Of course, no actual middle-class human being will see his or her taxes cut. The Bush tax cuts will just continue and the theoretical harm of the AMT will be averted.


Then they will repeal the carried interest exemption on all partnerships (real estate and energy as well as private equity) and will hold up the massive and obscene earnings of hedge fund managers and their unjustifiable tax preferences as the poster child for their tax increases. They will feature Blackstone and its billion-dollar executives as the targets of their tax increases.


All of this camouflage will fool enough people to get the votes in a Democratic Congress to pass their tax program. But once the increases start being felt on tax day, it will be a different story. But, by then, it will be too late. Halloween will be every day.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Outrage: How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . And". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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