SARAH PALIN BLOG

Palin : NO NEW TAXES

Mama Grizzly's not happy and takes to Facebook to call out Republicans who, just yesterday, voted to increase taxes via what's been referred to as the "internet tax".   

Posted to Palin's Facebook page: 

More new taxes? How can we be divided on new taxes? In this horribly weak economy with an over-reaching, over-spending, anti-small-business government continually making the wrong decisions, Republicans can't even stay committed to "No New Taxes"?

Please step away from your Washington, DC bubble and get back in touch with the hard working people who sent you there. Read the planks in our party's platform and then read our lips. Learn from history or face repeating it: NO NEW TAXES.

- Sarah Palin

Palin: Thomas Sowell's Fiscal Cliff Notes Part 1 & Part 2

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin posted the following articles by Thomas Sowell on her Facebook page December 6th. 

Fiscal Cliff Notes as published at Townhall: 

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting.

First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days.

And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year?

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting "the rich" to pay "their fair share" is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics. Taxing "the rich" will produce a drop in the bucket when compared to the staggering and unprecedented deficits of the Obama administration.

No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year. Yet political and media discussions of the financial crisis have been focused overwhelmingly on how to get more tax revenue to pay for past and future spending.

The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. For example, "We are just asking the rich to pay a little more."

This is an insult to our intelligence. The government doesn't "ask" anybody to pay anything. It orders you to pay the taxes they impose and you can go to prison if you don't.

Then there are all the fancy substitute words for plain old spending-- words like "stimulus" or "investing in the industries of the future."

The theory about "stimulus" is that government spending will stimulate private businesses and financial institutions to put more of their money into the economy, speeding up the recovery. But the fact that you call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus.

Stimulus spending began during the Bush administration and has continued full blast during the Obama administration. But the end result is that both businesses and financial institutions have had record amounts of their own money sitting idle. The rate of circulation of money slowed down. All this is the opposite of stimulus. More

 

Fiscal Cliff Notes: Part 2 as published at Townhall:

One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he plays "chicken" with the Congressional Republicans along the "fiscal cliff," is that Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media-- nor, apparently, by the Republicans.

A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit-- so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich."

It sounds very plausible, and constant repetition without a challenge may well be enough to convince the voting public that, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not go along with Barack Obama's demands for more spending and higher tax rates on the top 2 percent, it just shows that they care more for "the rich" than for the other 98 percent.

What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is. That also makes it completely inexplicable why the Republicans have not done so.

The official statistics which show plainly how wrong Barack Obama is can be found in his own "Economic Report of the President" for 2012, on page 411. You can look it up.

You may be able to find a copy of the "Economic Report of the President" for 2012 at your local public library. Or you can buy a hard copy from the Government Printing Office or download an electronic version from the Internet.

For those who find that "a picture is worth a thousand words," they need only see the graphs published in the November 30th issue of Investor's Business Daily.

What both the statistical tables in the "Economic Report of the President" and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up-- not down-- after tax rates were cut during the Bush administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined, year after year, after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit.

Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2006: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year."

While the New York Times may not have expected this, there is nothing unprecedented about lower tax rates leading to higher tax revenues, despite automatic assumptions by many in the media and elsewhere that tax rates and tax revenues automatically move in the same direction. They do not.

The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction. More

Palin: Pain at the Pump

Posted to Sarah Palin's Facebook page earlier today:

Here's an interview I did with Breitbart News about our energy policies. Eric Bolling and I are hosting a special called "Paying at the Pump" at 10pm ET tonight on Fox News.

In an exclusive interview to Breitbart News, Sarah Palin discussed energy policy and her Fox News Special (with Eric Bolling) "Paying at the Pump," which airs tonight on FNC at 10pm ET. The program will re-air on Saturday and Sunday.  She also touched on some other topics of the day...      More

 

Eric Bolling posted the following to his FOX News blog regarding tonight's special "Paying at the Pump":

In a special called ‘Paying at the Pump,’ Governor Sarah Palin and I are extremely concerned about the gasoline crisis in America. It’s an energy crisis that threatens our fragile economy at a time most Americans cannot afford it. The gas price spike affects every single American in ways you would never think of. That’s why we decided to offer the Obama administration our help. Combined, Governor Palin and I have five decades of experience in energy, and we will offer the administration some actionable steps they might take to save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. But, will they listen? Will they act or let the American people suffer more pain at the pump? Don’t forget to tune in Friday at 10p ET.

There's a series of 9 photos from the filming of the special here. You won't want to miss them.

Palin: Alaska Airlines’ Prayer Cards; It’s hip to be offended?

Posted to Sarah Palin's Facebook page earlier today:

It seems astonishing that someone would be offended by a simple prayer card placed on an airline’s meal tray, but I guess that’s the politically correct world we live in now. A few days ago, Rev. Franklin Graham gave me a heads up that Alaska Airlines may discontinue its nice, decades-long Alaskan tradition of including a little prayer card on flight meal trays. Rev. Graham is a frequent flyer to Alaska on Alaska Airlines because of his missionary work. Of course, as an Alaskan I’m also a frequent flyer on this airlines, which always seems to provide superb service. When I heard from Rev. Graham, I immediately sent the following letter to the CEO and President of Alaska Airlines.

It feels so odd that some may be offended by a little card with an encouraging non-denominational verse from the Psalms, but how often do we hear complaints about tawdry ads or billboard images flashing at us everywhere we turn? People of faith and common decency just shrug and move on from the constant assault on their sensibilities; we don’t call for censorship – at least I don’t. So, why in this day and age must every reference to faith in God be censored from the public square? Why must a private company buckle under pressure from a handful of people who find a little card saying “the Lord is my shepherd” offensive? I’m sure there are many more people who appreciate the cards, or at least are ambivalent about them.  More

Palin: How Congress Occupied Wall Street

Since Sunday night's 60 Minutes Episode (clips here, here, and here), the news world has been set on fire with revelations from the book "Throw Them All Out".  Written by Palin's foreign policy adviser Peter Schweizer, the explosive "Throw Them All Out" provides documented evidence of our elected officials (AKA permanent political class) enriching themselves at the expense of their constituents. Think about it.  Acting on a stock market trade with insider information would send you or I to jail (think Martha Stewart) yet our members of Congress have a different set of laws that apply to them.  Isn't that convenient?  These elected officials are privy to all sorts of information allowing them to buy or sell thus giving them the added edge.  In today's Wall Street Journal op-ed, Sarah Palin again calls for "sudden and relentless reform".  Governor Palin, I agree.

 

From The Wall Street Journal:

Politicians who arrive in Washington as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires. Why?

By SARAH PALIN

Mark Twain famously wrote, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out," reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.)

Mr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians' stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers'? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.  More

H/T Team Sarah member Sherrie

Palin: American Crony Capitalism Brings Jobs to Finland

Good grief!  It seems as of late, every day brings us a new story of either a failed business that received massive amounts of stimulas funds, a business that recieves stimulas funds and then promptly lays off a large percentage of its workforce or in this case, a business that receives stimulas funds then sends the jobs to another country.  More often than not, the story is accompanied with a one-liner describing the recipient's relationship to a high ranking member of the U.S. Congress.  For me, this begs the question, "How's that hopey changey stuff woking out for you"? 

From Sarah Palin's Facebook page:

It’s bad enough that we borrow money from foreign countries to give to foreign countries. Now we borrow from foreign countries to finance jobs in foreign countries. (This kind of reminds me of the $2 billion assistance President Obama provided Brazil for their off-shore energy developments, while shutting down or blocking much of our own off-shore domestic drilling. He’s in favor of energy jobs in Brazil. But in America? Not so much.)

Do you think, as the President tours the country campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime, he understands that voters in Finland won’t get to decide whether or not he keeps his job in 2012, but voters in Michigan and Ohio sure will? In fact, I’m sure the millions of unemployed workers in every state will want to learn why the Obama administration gave half a billion dollars to finance “green” cars built in Finland.

While they’re at it, the geniuses in the White House could also explain the $1.2 billion they gave to SunPower, a company that makes Solyndra look like a blue chip stock. SunPower’s market capitalization is $800 million, but the company is in debt $820 million. What a great investment, huh? Your tax dollars at work, America! If President Obama wants answers about this, he better act fast because his Department of Energy was already caught revising history by scrubbing SunPower’s name out of old DOE press releases. The President should start by asking Democrat Congressman George Miller about the company. Rep. Miller was the leading advocate for giving money to SunPower, which hired his son as a lobbyist.  More

Palin: "There will be a Woman President"

Governor Sarah Palin spoke at the World Knowledge Forum 2011 in Seoul, South Korea some 12 hours ago.  Palin spoke on a variety of issues including social changes brought about by the aid of mobile devices providing individuals with more choices, the strength of Asian economies, and China's military build-up. 

Photo credit: AFP

Additional details can be found at AFP, Bloomberg and ABC News. 

 

Palin: Crony Capitalism on Steroids from GE to Solyndra (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Yet another shoe drops in the ongoing crony capitalism problems now engulfing the Obama administration. Yesterday, we learned that the Obama White House allegedly pressured a four-star Air Force general to change his testimony about a company linked to a major Democrat donor.

Guess who's taking on the establishment again?

Posted to Sarah Palin's Facebook page last night:

In my recent speech in Iowa, some eyebrows were raised when I took on our government’s enormous economic problems caused by crony capitalism. As if on cue, just days later President Obama selected someone who exemplifies a major crony capitalism problem to sit next to the First Lady when he delivered his “jobs plan” speech before Congress. He selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as his honored guest.

Having grown up with great respect for GE thanks to stories my grandfather shared with us about his days working for the company and even meeting GE spokesman-at-the-time Ronald Reagan during a company event, I am saddened at GE’s leadership evolution. This corporation is now the poster child of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.

This icon of American industry is a company full of good employees who make some good products (and is the parent company of a huge media outlet), but GE is also a large American corporation that pays virtually no corporate income taxes despite earning worldwide profits of $14.2 billion last year, $5.1 billion of it in the United States. In fact, they claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion, meaning they received more of our hard earned tax dollars than they contributed. How is that possible? It’s because not only do they shelter their money from taxes, but they also get many tax credits, loans, government grants, and other benefits from the federal government that our smaller businesses couldn’t even imagine being able to profit from.

Joining GE in the pantheon on crony capitalism is another Obama favorite that has been in the news of late: Solyndra. The President hailed this “green energy” company in a speech last May as “the true engine of economic growth.” When he announced the $535 million guarantee to Solyndra, Vice President Biden said that investments like this are “exactly what the Recovery Act is all about.” (Dear God…If the failed Solyndra venture has been what it’s “all about,” then that explains a lot.) As I pointed out in my speech at the Reagan Ranch Center last February: “History has proven again and again, when government picks the winners and losers, we’re stuck with the losers, and we the taxpayers subsidize failure!” And that’s what we’re seeing now, as the FBI raids the solar energy company’s headquarters to glean more information after the company was handed half a billion dollars in “green energy” Stimulus funds from the American taxpayer only to later declare bankruptcy. More than one thousand Solyndra workers lost their jobs. Now as the truth comes out, we discover that the White House was heavily involved in the Department of Energy’s rushed decision to give the Stimulus funds to Solyndra, and they tried to move the money through so quickly they seem to have ignored concerns that the company was not viable. Why would they do this? Perhaps it’s because a large investor in the company (about 35%) is Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser. And with the way the deal is structured, Kaiser will get his debts paid before we the taxpayers see any relief. That is sickening. And that’s how it works: workers lose their jobs, wealthy political cronies stand a good chance of getting their money back, and the U.S. taxpayer gets the shaft. Again.

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Cross posted at Team Sarah

Palin: Welcome, Union Brothers and Sisters

Posted to Sarah Palin's Facebook page moments ago:

In my speech on Saturday in Iowa, I said: “Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and ‘green energy’ giveaways, [Barack Obama] took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again.” This was shamefully on display yesterday at President Obama’s taxpayer-funded campaign rally in Detroit. In introducing the President, Teamsters President James Hoffa represented precisely what I was talking about as he declared war on concerned independent Americans and on the freshman members we sent to Congress last November by saying, “Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out!”

What I say now, I say as a proud former union member and the wife, daughter, and sister of union members. So, as a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former Laborers, IBEW, and later USW member, please hear me out. What I have to say is for the hard working, patriotic, selfless union brothers and sisters in Michigan and throughout our country: Please don’t be taken in by union bosses’ thuggery like Jim Hoffa represented yesterday. Union bosses like this do not have your best interests at heart. What they care about is their own power and re-electing their friend Barack Obama so he will take care of them to the detriment of everyone else.

To the same degree Americans are concerned about irresponsible, greedy corporate execs who got cushy bonuses from taxpayer-funded bailouts, we should also be concerned about greedy union bosses who are willing to tank our economy just to protect their own power. As union history shows, power and greed corrupt. Just because you claim to represent union members doesn’t mean you are on the side of the angels. The greed of too many of these union bosses has all but destroyed the labor movement in this country, helped chase away our jobs, and is killing the American dream.

To see where this leads, look at what’s happening to the working class in our industrialized cities. These cities are going to hell in a hand basket thanks to corruption, crony capitalism, and the union bosses’ greed. The union bosses derive their power from your union dues and their promise to deliver your votes to whichever politician they’re in bed with. They get their power from you, and yet their actions ultimately hurt you. They’re chasing American industry offshore by making outrageous, economically illogical demands that they know will never work. And now that they’ve chased jobs out of union states, they’re trying to chase them out of right-to-work states like South Carolina, so eventually the jobs will leave America altogether. But these union bosses will still figure out a way to keep their gig, and so will their politically aligned corporate friends. As long as these big corporations have a good crony capitalist in the White House, they can rely on DC to bail them out until the whole system goes bankrupt, which, I am afraid, is not very far off. When big government, big business, and big union bosses collude together, they get government to maximize their own interests against those of the rest of the country.

So, now these union bosses are desperately trying to cast the grassroots Tea Party Movement as being “against the workingman.” How outrageously wrong this unapologetic Jim Hoffa is, for the people’s movement is the real movement for working class men and women. It’s rooted in real solidarity, and not special interests and corporate kickbacks. It represents the needed reform that will empower workers and job creators. We stand with the little guy against the corruption and influence peddling of those who collude to grease the wheels of government power.  MORE

 

Palin: Conquering the Storm

For real hope, a direction for this nation, and inspiration for the weary, look no further than Palin's "Conquering the Storm".  ~Jackie~

Posted to Sarah Palin's Facebook page earlier today:

In the coming days we’ll sort through the repercussions of S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating, including concerns about the impact a potential interest rate increase would have on our ability to service our suffocating $14.5 trillion debt.

I’m surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision. Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming? I’ve been writing and speaking about it myself for quite some time.

Back in December 2010, I wrote: “If the European debt crisis teaches us anything, it’s that tomorrow always comes. Sooner or later, the markets will expect us to settle the bill for the enormous Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge. We’ve already been warned by the credit ratings agency Moody’s that unless we get serious about reducing our deficit, we may face a downgrade of our credit rating.” And again in January, in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address I wrote: “With credit ratings agency Moody’s warning us that the federal government must reverse the rapid growth of national debt or face losing our triple-A rating, keep in mind that a nation doesn’t look so ‘great’ when its credit rating is in tatters.”

One doesn’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure this out! Just look across the pond at Europe. European nations with less debt and smaller deficits than ours and with real “austerity” plans in place to deal with them have had their ratings downgraded. By what magical thinking did we figure we could run up perpetual trillion dollar deficits and still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics of a downgrade? Nothing is ever “too big to fail.” And there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Didn’t we all learn that in our micro and macro econ classes? I did at the University of Idaho. How could Obama skip through Columbia and Harvard without learning that?

Many commonsense Americans like myself saw this day coming. In fact, in June 2010, Rick Santelli articulated the view of independent Tea Party patriots everywhere when he shouted on CNBC, “I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! STOP SPENDING!” So, how shamelessly cynical and dishonest must one be to blame this inevitable downgrade on the very people who have been shouting all along “stop spending”? Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome. Tea Party Americans weren’t the ones “fiddling” while our country’s fiscal house was going up in smoke. In fact, we commonsense fiscal conservatives were the ones grabbing for the extinguishers while politically correct politicians and their cronies buried their heads in what soon became this bonfire.

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