taxes – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

Genesis 47, Jacob and Pharaoh, Israel settles in Goshen, Joseph enslaves the Egyptians.

Jacob is at this time 130 years old. “My years have been few” is an understatement” but Jacob compares it to the pilgrimage of his grandfather Abraham.

Joseph had been granted absolute power to rule over Egypt. Pharaoh continued to reign over Egypt, so Joseph started to do Pharaoh’s bidding.

But, as we see, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Through taxes on grain produced during the good years, Joseph had amassed all the grain supply for the government. He is now selling it back at a far higher price than he bought the excess harvests over and above the taxed harvests during the good years.

These are the steps to gain total control over the people.

Establish government monopoly over the food supply.

2. Collect all the money and other valuables in exchange for some of the food.

3. Take control over the livestock and other ways of sustenance.

4. Take over the land in exchange for some of the food.

5. Reduce people to servitude and slavery in exchange for some of the food.

6. Once the famine is over, keep the people as sharecroppers to keep the system stable.

CO2 reductions to solve Climate change? Wrong solution for the world. A Limerick.

Renewable energy: – Clean.

The world is so dirty and mean.

Never mind the expense

and it doesn’t make sense.

CO2 is what makes the world green.

The White House Aug 3 announced a target of 32% reduction in CO2 emission from U.S. power plants by 2030. This is a target that no existing Coal fired power plant can meet, only natural gas fired power plants. He also proposed a 70% reduction in emissions other than CO2, which has its merits.

Obama may yet succeed in his campaign promise: “Under my plan the electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.”

Obama wants us to have as expensive electricity as Denmark and Germany, the two countries with the most wind and solar power per capita.

The chart tells it all. Thirty Cent/ kWh in Denmark.

Us is (was?) an outlier with cheap and abundant fossil fuel and low fuel taxes.

Australia is an outlier, They are paying for implementing a carbon tax.

The President said in his announcement that last year was the warmest on record and that fourteen of the fifteen warmest years occurred in this century.

Another way of looking at the temperature record is: Last year was still one of the 700 coldest in the last 10000 years. See fig: We have now had over ten years since the last major hurricane hit the U.S. mainland. A new record.

The rise of the oceans is partly because we are still recovering from the last Ice age. One point in Northern Sweden is rising as much as three feet per century. This and normal continental drift explains why many coastlines such as the Eastern Seaboard are sinking.

Verse 31 of the Obama Impeachment song: Raising taxes through executive action.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is “very interested” in the idea of raising taxes through unilateral executive action.

“The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans,” Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.

Raising taxes on my own

Contempt for Congress I have shown.

All the money I have blown,

Now China demands: Repay our loan.

The complete Obama Impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song

Verse 27 of the Obama impeachment song. Let the Government run the Internet!

If you love Government run Healthcare, remember the good old days when MaBell had a virtual monopoly on telephones, appreciate the simplicity of the tax code and the IRS, you must be for “Net Neutrality”.

“In my adult life I have never seen a situation that paralleled what I read in Ayn Rands books until now with Net Neutrality,” tweeted Billionaire Mark Cuban in November. “If Ayn Rand were an up and coming author today, she wouldn’t write about steel or railroads, it would be net neutrality.”

Which brings us to verse 27 of the Obama Impeachment song. The regulation proposed far exceeds Presidential authority.

Internet must be controlled,

to keep the sheeple in their fold.

Otherwise free speech takes hold,

my treason will be forever told.

The whole Obama Impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/

And this was Verizon’s response: (Their original response was in Morse Code, but few still remember Morse Code so they had to find an old typewriter to type the message)

Verizon public policy

Lois Lerner of IRS tax exempt division to take the fifth. A Limerick.

Ms. Lerner is taking the fifth
She surely is losing her pith.
Since she lied through her teeth.
It gets hot underneath.
She’ll languish in anguish and writhe.
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Background according to LA Times: WASHINGTON — A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista). The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

IRS targets tea-party, prayer, respect for life for harassment. A Limerick.

The left gets exempt from a tax.
The right gets intrusive attacks.
Meet the new IRS.
They decide who to bless.
Let’s pray that the hacks get the axe.
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Sarah Palin tweeted: “IRS Asks Iowa Pro-Life Group What They Pray About” …This is just surreal.
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An excerpt from the IRS questionnaire

Please explain how all of your activities, including the prayer meetings held outside of Planned Parenthood, are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3). Organizations exempt under 501(c)(3) may present opinions with scientific or medical facts. Please explain in detail the activities at these prayer meetings. Also, please provide the percentage of time your organizations spends on prayer groups as compared with the other activities of the organization.
From: http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2013/05/irs-asks-iowa-pro-life-group-what-they-pray-about/

Obama wants taxes like Sweden. A Limerick.

We are now in the thick of sequestration, a two percent cut in the growth of government spending, and according to Obama one of the worst calamities possible unless we raise taxes. In the meantime the stock market is in record territory. Some must see the world through a thick smoke.
This is what “Riksskatteverket”, the Swedish equivalent of the IRS has produced to prod people into paying more taxes.

Before coming to the U.S. from Sweden, I experienced a rather steep rise in taxes to help pay for a rapidly expanding government services. I got very good raises, but all the raises were absorbed in higher taxes, so my take home pay stayed about the same. After I left things got much worse, so bad that the famous author of “Pippi Longstocking,” Astrid Lindgren penned this essay in the tabloid “Expressen” in 1976 : https://lenbilen.com/2012/01/24/pomperipossa-in-monismania/
This character Pomperipossa helped bring down the socialist Swedish government after a reign of 44 years.
Which brings me to today’s Limerick.
Obama wants taxing like Sweden;
The welfare state’s excesses Eden.
No more jobs is our lot
They have all gone to pot
In the pit they are smoking their weed in.

Sequestration, the end of the world? A Limerick.

Obama the spender: “Tax more!
We Must spend much more than before
on Solyndra and friends”.
for on such he depends.
Sequester: Cut waste to the core?

So, is cutting the growth in spending by 86 Billion in a Federal Continuing Resolution spending of over 3.6 Trillion dollars the end of the world? Congress (The Democrats in the Senate, that is Harry Reid) have prevented a vote on any budget for four years. Yhe only budget that have been voted on in the Senate is the Presidental budget proposal. It got defeated 97 to 0. Not one Democrat voted for the White House budget! They are much more comfortable spending on the Continuing resolution, continuing to spend on canceled programs, not funding changes except as “emergencies” thus multiplying the debt.
The President himself promised to veto any proposal that changed the seguester. Listen:

Harry Reid blocks vote on Obama’s tax hike proposal. A Limerick.

Obama must think it is time to smoke weed.

McConnell said “vote”, but that old geezer Reid

put Obama’s proposal

in the garbage disposal.

We’ll go over the cliff, it’s Obama’s misdeed.

A Limerick on Thanksgiving Day leftovers: A 24 Billion dollar increase in Federal Debt.

The U.S. Treasury increased the net debt of the United States $24,327,048,384.38 on the day after Thanksgiving, which equals $211.69 for each of the nation’s 114,916,000 households. (CNSNEWS)

In August 2011, the debt ceiling — the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow — was raised by $2.4 trillion, to $16.394 trillion. According to the National Debt Clock, as of Nov. 23, the total debt was nearing the limit, at $16.3 trillion. You also could think of it as about $51,000 per person in the US.

A decadent town on Potomac,

where cronyism fills up its stomach.

It is borrow and spend,

print more money to lend.

Our government has run amok.