Tag Archives: Taxes

News

New-home sales plunge 33% to record low in May

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Story from CBS Marketwatch. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sales of new single-family homes plunged 33% in May to a record-low level after a federal subsidy for home buyers expired, according to data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

Sales dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000, the lowest since records began in 1963. April’s sales pace was revised down to 446,000 compared with the 504,000 originally reported. March’s sales were also revised lower.

The results were much worse than expected, and economists had expected a 20% decline to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 405,000.

[…]Sales fell sharply in all four regions, with sales down more than 50% in the West.

The median sales price in May was $200,900, down 9.6% from a year earlier and the lowest since December 2003.

[…]Housing data in May have been dismal. Housing starts fell 10%, building permits fell 5.9%, mortgage applications dropped, and the home builders’ index fell by five points. The only bright spot was mortgage rates, which stayed very low.

Obama’s solution to this problem was government spending in the form of an $8000 federal tax credit “stimulus” for people who bought homes between February and April. How did that government-run top-down Keynesian stimulus solution work out?

Excerpt:

The tax credit likely pulled many sales forward into the first four months of the year. Sales increased a cumulative 29% between February and April. But once the credit expired, sales collapsed in May.

I guess maybe they were hoping to “prime the pump” which of course doesn’t work any more than “cash for clunkers” works.

News

80,000 tons of food rotting in Venezuela government warehouse

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Story from CNBC. (H/T Barb’s Blog)

Excerpt:

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

[…]Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

Jose Guzman, an assistant manager at a store raided in Catia, watched with resignation as government agents pored over the company’s accounts and computers after the food ministry official and the television cameras left.

“The government is pushing this type of establishment toward bankruptcy,” said Guzman, who linked the raid to the rotten food scandal. “Somehow they have to replace all the food that was lost, and this is the most expeditious way.”

Well, the best way to get control of the people is to create an artificial shortage so that they depend on the government. It’s like passing a carbon tax, or instituting a moratorium on drilling – you reduce supply and then take control when the people get angry.

Who Chavez remind me of?

Hey Chavez! How do I get the economy to grow?

Oh yeah.

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News

Is Mike Huckabee a Bible-believing Christian?

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Laura from Pursuing Holiness has concerns about Mike Huckabee. (H/T Foxfier)

She writes in part:

In defiance of libertarian laissez-faire, Huckabee has extended his Christian vision to include the poor. “If there are a certain number of kids from single-parent homes who aren’t going to school and don’t have health care, you can say that’s not government’s job,” Huckabee told me. “Well, sweet and fine! But you know what? If the kid’s sitting outside the door of the hospital choking with asthma, do I sit there and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think, philosophically, government should get involved’? I’d much rather the kid get help than I sit around and say I’m so pure in my ideology.”

I actually don’t think that Huckabee is even a real Republican or a real Christian. Not only is he a crappy tax-raising, amnesty-granting, big government socialist, but I don’t think he isn’t even a Bible-believing Christian.

Consider this in John 14:6:

6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And this in Acts 4:12:

12Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

Look what Huckster says:

Other members of the group politely admitted that they had no doubt that most Israelis, and anyone else who had not accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour, would be spending eternity in Hell. (“That is an issue,” a man named Randy Rebold told me apologetically.) Huckabee’s formulation is considerably more politic. “If somebody asked me, How do I get to Heaven, I would tell them that the only way I personally am aware of is faith in Christ, because I believe the New Testament,” he said. “That’s the only map I got. Somebody says, Well, I got a different map. O.K.! You know what? If it works, I’m not going to argue with you.”

That’s not Christianity. That’s relativism. He doesn’t even have the map he thinks he has.