Rep. Barney Frank says excessive compensation packages for top corporate executives played a key role in the country’s financial crisis, and he wants to reign in that pay.

“I believe that the structure of compensation has been flawed,” the Massachusetts Democrat said while chairing a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Thursday.

Frank wants to develop guidelines for compensation practices, and not just for companies receiving government bailout dollars. Frank argues the problems is much wider.

Hmmm, now it seems that I’ve heard this somewhere before…

WASHINGTON — The IRS is weighing a proposal to deem one-quarter of employees’ use of work cell phones as personal use and therefore subject to tax as a fringe benefit.

The proposal is one of several options the IRS put forward this week on the tax treatment of employer-provided cell phones. Current law already requires that the value of those cell phone services be included in a worker’s gross income, unless the employee keeps detailed records showing that the cell phone is used for work only — an idea cell phone trade groups are objecting to.

So who decides this?  This is one of the dangers of giving so much power to an agency like the IRS.  They can decide to change the rules and up your taxes at any time without congressional approval.  They can in effect, raise your taxes with the stroke of a pen.

This is so rediculous.  I’m required to have a cell phone, so my company provides it.  It’s very basic service, voice only, but I do make personal calls on it.  They have unlimited voice so why not?  With the Obamanation in charge, they feel they can tax anything they want.  He’s all about taxing those of us who are actually generating income.

June 12 (Bloomberg) — Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes.

So you take an economy that’s in shambles and add more debt and taxes to those who are still working and employing people.  What a wonderful way to begin the socialization of the economy.  Make everyone dependent upon the government for healthcare and aid for food since you’re taxed into the poor house.  Brilliance Komrade Obama! Brilliance!

Make no mistake.  This will INCREASE unemployment as companies already on the brink now have another reason to move overseas where you can pollute as much as you want without consequence.

I like clean air as much as the next person.  I also like being able to work, pay my bills, and feed my family.  Obama’s crew is coming up with new ways every day to drive this country into its grave.  This is just another nail in the coffin.

Raising taxes on struggling companies and raising the cost of energy for every American is not the way to create jobs.  Obama is on some kind of power high that makes him think he can do no wrong.  That is partially the fault of the media and Americans who are still drunk from his becoming president.  Get over it and look at what he’s doing to the economy.  The government does not create jobs.  It cannot create jobs it can only take them away by passing legislation like this.

God help us.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin’s report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

Much like the Soviet Union, dissenting views will not be tolerated in this administration. LONG LIVE THE OSM!

Here’s your government run healthcare that the OSM keeps pushing on you:

“They said to me that you had a brain tumor and it was pressing on your optic chasm and that it needed to come out immediately,” Holmes said.

Holmes is Canadian, but the “they” she refers to are doctors at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, where she turned after specialists in her own government-run health care system would not see her fast enough.

“My family doctor at that time tried to get me in to see an endocrinologist and a neurologist,” Holmes recalled. “It was going to be four months for one specialist and six months for the other.”

I don’t know about you, but I can hardly “wait” for this kind of healthcare!

Here’s something else that I find interesting:

Despite Shona Holmes’ horror story about her inability to get timely treatment for a brain tumor, Canadian officials and doctors insist most life-threatening cases are treated quickly.

Toronto’s Doug Wright can attest to that. The 40-year-old father of three young boys found out last month he has cancer — a tumor on his leg.

But he says he never had to wait more than five days to see a specialist or get a test. And from diagnosis to surgery, it will be just over a month.

“The community medical system thought this process could not have been any better. I have not had to wait to see some of the best specialists in the country, who are renowned internationally,” Wright said.

An investment adviser, Wright has the money to go to the U.S. for his care, but says there is no need.

Note how the rich guy got much quicker treatment than the average gal.  Coincidence?  Maybe or maybe not.

Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy.

But they are pushing it through anyway.  NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT. CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES.  Otherwise they will let it pass and the US economy will ultimately collapse under its own weight; the weight of Obamas socialist agenda.

Don’t cross Obama’s friends or you may end up jobless… or worse.

Obama hastily removed Walpin after a board meeting in May in which, the White House says, he was “unduly disruptive,” and exhibited a “lack of candor” in providing information to decision makers.

Walpin has emphatically disputed the charge, calling it baseless. Walpin believes his firing was a result of bad blood between him and the board over his investigation of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, for alleged misuse of federal funds.

Fact: Nearly 10 million (9.7) of the 45.7 million uninsured are “not a citizen.” That makes every media claim of uninsured Americans higher than 35.9 million is wrong.

Myth: The 40 million to 50 million uninsured cannot afford health insurance.

Fact: More than 17 million of the uninsured make at least $50,000 per year (the median household income of $50,233) – 8.4 million make $50,000 to $74,999 per year and 9.1 million make $75,000 or higher. Two economists working at the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that 25 to 75 percent of those who do not purchase health insurance coverage “could afford to do so.”

Myth: The 40 million to 50 million uninsured do not get health care.

Fact: The National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that uninsured people get about $1,500 of free health care per year, or $6,000 per family of four.

Fact: An Urban Institute study found that 25 percent of the uninsured already qualify for government health insurance programs.

Myth: People will remain uninsured without government assistance.

Fact: The Congressional Budget Office says that 45 percent of the uninsured will be insured within four months. CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin also said that the frequent claim of 40+ million Americans lacking insurance is an “incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the uninsured population.”

Fact: Liberal non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation put the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 8.2 million and 13.9 million. (The 8.2 million figure includes only those uninsured for two years or more.)

Fact: CBO analysis found that 36 million people would remain uninsured even if the Senate’s $1.6 trillion health care plan is passed.

The White House strategy of turning supporters into snitches when they see “fishy” information about the health care debate may run afoul of the law, legal experts say.

“The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.

“There’s also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can’t try to rewrite history by pretending it didn’t receive anything,” he said.

“If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute.”

Napolitano was referring to the Privacy Act of 1974, which was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.

This president more than any in history has feared and tried to squash dissent.  If you disagree, you are the enemy and are to be feared.  When will it become a crime to speak out against our great savior or should I say “Great Leader”?  only time will tell I suppose.  After he becomes our “Eternal President”?