Palin goes to Haiti for two days to “support” conservative evangelist Franklin “Obama is a Muslim” Graham’s relief efforts. Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing Conservatives sneer about when some “Hollywood liberal” does it like Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie or George Clooney?
“I do urge Americans not to forget Haiti,” Palin told reporters at a religious relief group’s compound north of Port-au-Prince, the capital city.
Palin delivered her remarks — and declined to take reporters’ questions — at a 15-minute news conference Sunday as she wrapped up a two-day visit in Haiti.
She and her husband Todd and daughter Bristol went to see relief work led by Rev. Franklin Graham, head of the nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse and son of evangelist Billy Graham.
I guess it’s okie-dokie if you’re a Mama Grizzly who kills moose and caribou with her own hands (and a high powered rifle) on cable TV.
I can’t figure out if Sarah Palin is actually running for President or just a publicity hound trying to keep the celebrity money machine which is Palin, Inc. rolling. To say I distrust her motives in making this trip is an understatement. Especially since she isn’t very charitable with respect to her position on unemployed Americans getting extended benefits in exchange for millionaires getting extended tax cuts:
Palin seemed to cast her lot with the handful of conservatives who have come out against the agreement hashed out by the White House and congressional Republicans. It extends for two years all the expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts — including those for the highest income earners — in exchange for an extension of unemployment benefits and other middle-class tax breaks.
“Obviously Obama is so very, very wrong on the economy & spins GOP tax cut goals; so fiscal conservatives: we expect you to fight for us & America’s solvency,” Palin wrote in a series of tweets.
By the way, for the record the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for the next two years is estimated to cost over $80 Billion Dollars.
Specifically, $81.5 Billion for the people earning over $250,000 a year. The tax deal would also result in:
$69 BILLION for Business tax breaks.
$68 Billion from raising the Estate Tax exemption estates to cover only those with assets in excess of $5 million and lowering the highest tax rate on estates over 5 Million to 35% from the rate of 45% that would otherwise go into effect. It would also allow a tax free $5 MILLION gift to a spouse to be excluded from taxable estates and other means for the wealthiest Americans to avoid paying estate taxes.
“This is better than 2010, because you can avoid estate taxes and you don’t have to die to do it,’’ observes Columbia Law School Professor Michael Graetz, who was Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy during George H. W. Bush’s administration and is the author of books on both estate and income tax.
Moreover, rich folks with good estate planners will be able to transfer a lot more than $5 million per person, or $10 million per couple. Before this deal, President Obama had favored returning to the 2009 estate tax law—a $3.5 million estate tax exemption and a 45% rate. Even Republican staffers had assumed that the political price of gaining the higher estate tax exemption of $5 million and the lower rate of 35% in the Obama-Republican deal, would be restrictions on planning techniques such as the Walton GRAT (named after a member of the Wal-Mart founding family who used it). Such techniques allow rich folks to transfer considerable wealth and treat the transfer as having miniscule gift tax value. (An explanation of GRATs and why today’s low interest rates make them even more attractive for the rich, is here.)
With a $5 million gift and generation skipping tax exemption and no new restrictions on planning techniques, “an unbelievable amount of wealth can be shifted,’’ says Stephan R. Leimberg , a noted estate and trust lawyer who publishes a collection of e-mailed newsletters widely read by estate and tax planning pros. “You have just witnessed a great bank robbery,’’ Leimberg adds. “The doors of the Treasury have been thrown open. The Republicans have robbed the bank and the estate and gift tax (change) is the jewel of the robbery.”
By comparison, the cost in the Tax deal Obama cut with Republicans to extend the unemployment benefits for some unemployed people (not all) for one year is $56.5 billion according the the Congressional Budget office.
If those same tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans are permanently extended, the cost over the next ten years would equal roughly $690 BIILLION DOLLARS. Add in the cost of additional debt service of $140 Billion as a result of increasing the deficit and the total cost for extending tax cuts for the rich over the next decade would equal $830 BILLION over the next decade. And that is the official Republican goal: to make those tax cuts permanent.
If the estate tax is eliminated permanently (another Republican goal) the cost to the deficit over the next 10 years would be $500 BILLION DOLLARS according to the Congressional Joint Commision on Taxation. The claim the true cost of eliminating the estate tax en toto could be as high as $1 TRILLION over the next decade.
By the way, the worst way to help grow/stimulate the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is — drum roll please — Tax cuts. The best? Investing in infrastructure and extending unemployment benefits:
The Congressional Budget Office evaluated a variety policies earlier this year based on their ability to boost overall economic growth and employment. The number one thing Congress can do, according to the report, is to increase aid to the unemployed. Other efficient ways to give the economy a jolt include additional investments in infrastructure and more aid to states. The least efficient? Extending the tax cuts.
Needless to say, increasing employment would also increase tax revenues from all the additional people working and from their increased consumer spending which would increase business profits and thus tax revenues on said profits.
The Bush tax cuts that Republicans shout about and defend so diligently, however primarily went to the top 5% of income earners.
In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers
In short, the Bush tax cuts and the borrowing for Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan necessitated for the wealthy were a spectacular failure in terms of continuing to grow the deficit and inhibit economic vitality.
Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. … (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers
These deficit busting policies are the same ones the Republicans continue to support even as they claim that they are the deficit hawks and the deficit is all the fault of the Democrats and President Obama.
The economic damage these Republican policies did and continue to do to our country, policies that helped ruin countless millions of lives in America, mean nothing to people such as Sarah Palin.
But hey, she made a trip to Haiti to show what a great humanitarian she is. Her “concern” for the Haitian people is touching isn’t it? Especially when you consider her concern for helping Americans who aren’t paying huge fees to hear her give meaningless speeches about the wonders of more tax cuts for wealthy people like — Sarah Palin.
Can’t wait to see her make her run for President in 2012.
