The Stedman Report:

The sweeping demographic changes in America over the last half-century are strikingly evident in the changes in the status of federal income tax filers.

In 1960, 65.2 percent of taxpayers were married, filing jointly or separately, and 34.8 percent were single filers or unmarried heads of households.

Fifty years later in 2010 — the most recent year analyzed on the IRS website — 61 percent of filers were single and just 39 percent were married.

Back in 1960, married couples were the majority in every income quintile except the lowest. In the middle quintile, comprising “middle-income” taxpayers, 68 percent of filers were married and 32 percent were single, the Tax Foundation disclosed.

In 2010, however, singles accounted for 68 percent of middle quintile filers, while married couples accounted for 32 percent. Singles also dominated the first and second quintiles.

Other IRS facts uncovered by the Tax Foundation include:

• Among 67 percent of married couples, both spouses are working, up from 47 percent in 1965, and the percentage of sole-earner couples has fallen from 40 percent to 27 percent.

• The number of millionaire tax returns fluctuates wildly from year to year, due mostly to changes in the business cycle. In 2007, there were 392,220 millionaire returns, but just 168,977 in 2002, and 236,883 in 2009.

• Many people become millionaires as a result of a one-time event such as the sale of stocks or a business. Between 1999 and 2009, 50 percent of millionaire filers were millionaires for only one year; 4.4 percent filed million-dollar returns five times in that period, while 5.6 percent filed nine times.

• 33 percent of millionaire taxpayers are 45 to 55 years old, 28 percent are 55 to 65, and 18 percent are over 65. Just 0.3 percent are 18 to 26 years old, and 3 percent are 26 to 35.

Views expressed are not endorsed or put forward by Turning Point USA

The Stedman Report

So hard to believe this really happens, spend spend spend.

So this is why Speaker of the House John Boehner would not sign off on the $51 BILLION relief bill for Hurricane Sandy and Chris Christie made a big stink over it.

If you think the government doesn’t have a spending problem, just check the items added to the Hurricane Sandy Relief bill sent by the Senate to the House. Do any of them have any relation to the hurricane?

$4 million for the Kennedy Space Center.

$8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice Departments.

$20 million for a nationwide “Water Resources Priorities Study”.
$41 million for eight military bases including Guantanamo Bay.

$56.8 million for charting the debris from last year’s Japanese tsunami.

$58.8 million for forest restoration on private land.

$100 million for the federal Head Start day care program.

$150 million in funding for Alaskan fisheries.

$188 million for new Amtrak lines (not repair, whole new lines – and they’re doing so well with the ones they have?).

$197 million “to protect coastal ecosystems and habitat impacted by Hurricane Sandy.”

$5.3 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers (that’s more than their annual budget).

$10.78 billion for public transportation, most of which is allocated to future construction and improvements, not disaster relief.

$13 billion would go to “mitigation” projects to prepare for future storms.

$17 billion for wasteful Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), a program that has become notorious for its use as a backdoor earmark program.

How does any of this have anything to do with immediate emergency relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy?

Harry Reid passed this through the Senate then sent them all home, so that the House couldn’t send it back in time to remove the pork. All they could do was vote it down.

These Senators who voted for the bill don’t care about the victims of Sandy; it’s all just politics as usual.

Views expressed are not endorsed or put forward by Turning Point USA

The Stedman Report

More Doctors Planning Early Retirement
As the U.S. healthcare system changes dramatically over the next few years due to Obamacare, increasing numbers of doctors are planning to retire or scale back the hours they work, a new survey reveals.

The annual poll of 600 physicians by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that six out of 10 doctors believe it is likely that many physicians will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years.

The survey also found that 55 percent of physicians think that doctors will scale back their practice hours “based on how the future of medicine is changing,” Deloitte stated.

And 38 percent of doctors polled say Obamacare is “a step in the wrong direction,” while 44 percent say it is “a good start.”
Other findings of the Deloitte survey:

Half of the doctors polled think that physician income will fall dramatically in the next one to three years, and 68 percent of those with a solo practice think that way. Only 59 percent of primary care providers are satisfied with practicing medicine. A quarter of physicians would place new or additional limits on accepting Medicare patients if there were changes to the Medicare program such as lower payments or a switch to vouchers. Nearly three-quarters of those polled believe the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine in the future. Just one in 10 doctors thinks that medical liability reform will pass Congress in the next one to three years. Only 31 percent of doctors would give the overall U.S. healthcare system a grade of A or B.

Stedman Report

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, celebrated its third anniversary
on Saturday, but the controversial law’s biggest challenge is still on the horizon.

In the past three years, the ACA has survived a disastrous midterm election for the
Democrats and a nail-biting Supreme Court decision last June, which also changed
some key components of the law. But in October, the ACA faces a daunting task,
when as many as 24 million people will start to sign up for private health insurance
exchanges run by the government, starting in January 2014. The Congressional
Budget Office said in February that it projects that 7 million people will enter the
exchanges in 2014, with that number soaring to 24 million by 2017.

One of the key concepts behind the ACA was that states would be running the health
insurances exchanges, with some help from the federal government. But in most
cases, the federal government will run the exchanges until states decide to play a role
in their operations.

The federal government will need to find the funds to manage the transition and
organize a large operation that includes education, outreach, and complicated dealings
with the insurance companies offering the policies, with all of this kicking off in six
months. Officially called The Health Insurance Marketplace, the exchanges provide a
way for people without employer-sponsored insurance to get coverage and tax credits
for health care.

On October 1, the government will start taking applications for coverage. The
Washington Post recently obtained a draft of the application, which is 21 pages long.
(There will also be a secure, online version of the application.) The Health Insurance
Marketplace is also the area where small business will try to figure out how they will
insure workers, or just pay a penalty instead for not offering copaid insurance.

For now, the federal government will be running 26 of the exchanges outright and
another seven in partnership with states. And in an interesting twist, President Barack
Obama will be using the exchange system for part of his family’s health care, as will
members of Congress.

Most of the states that passed on setting up their own exchanges are run by
Republican governors. The federal government didn’t expect to be that involved in
running the exchanges when the October 2013 and January 2014 deadlines were set
years ago.

Another important part of the whole health insurance exchange process is Medicaid.
The Supreme Court ruling last June gave states the option to decline expanded
Medicaid funds, which were tied to expanded coverage within states for lower-income
citizens.

So far, 13 states have passed on taking federal money to expand Medicaid benefits.
That would keep some lower-income residents from receiving Medicaid benefits, as
well as hospitals from receiving Medicaid subsidies when they treat lower-income
patients. And since those low-income residents can’t get Medicaid, they could be
caught in a situation where they would pay higher premiums if they buy private
insurance in The Health Insurance Marketplace.

“States that do not move forward with the Medicaid expansion could see large gaps in
coverage because individuals with incomes below 100 percent (of the federal poverty
level) generally cannot receive subsidies to purchase coverage in the newly established
health insurance exchanges and will not gain any new affordable coverage options,”
said the Kaiser Family Foundation in a research paper. The Kaiser Foundation also
found that in its recent polling, most Americans are unsure about the major changes
coming in October, and few know about how the changes will be handled on a state
level.

About 48 percent of people acknowledge they knew nothing about their state’s
plans for insurance exchanges and Medicaid, and 78 percent knew little about their
governor’s stance on the Medicaid issue.

Kaiser also found that 57 percent of Americans said that they didn’t have enough
information to understand how the ACA would affect them, and most importantly,
more than two-thirds of people who are uninsured and in lower-income households
didn’t understand the ACA.

The one thing that most people understood, at 74 percent, was the individual mandate
that requires people to have insurance or pay a fine on their tax returns.

Stedman Report

(NaturalNews) As you may have suspected, there’s far more to the Cyprus bank crisis
story than meets the eye. It turns out the shutdown of Cypriot banks has caused a
large-scale financial shutdown of the Russian government which uses Cyprus banks
for most transactions.

On top of that, the EU central bank (ECB) has now issued an ultimatum that
threatens to revoke all financial support and crash the Cypriot banks if they can’t
come up with 5.8 billion Euros by Monday.

Reuters reports: The European Central Bank, which has kept Cyprus’s banks operating with
a liquidity lifeline, said the government had until Monday to get a deal in place, or funds would be
cut off – putting not just the Cypriot economy in jeopardy but billions of Euros held on the island by
foreigners, notably from Russia.

USA Today reports: “If it does not find a way by Monday, the European Central
Bank said it will cut off emergency support to the banks, letting them collapse. That
would throw the country into financial chaos and, ultimately, cause it to leave the
eurozone, with unpredictable consequences for the region.”

Until then, the banks remain closed, and everybody knows the minute they open,
every account holder will immediately transfer their money out of the banks,
causing a near-instant bank run and a collapse.

The worry across the eurozone now is that this imminent bank collapse will trigger
account holders in Greece to start taking their money out of the bank, too. The Greek
banking system is already in such sad shape that it only takes a very small percentage
of account holders withdrawing their funds — perhaps 5% or so — to topple Greek
banks. That’s because the banks are roughly 95% leveraged with fractional reserve
accounts and complex debt instruments.

Once bank runs begin in Greece, they will spread across the EU. Fear will kick in
everywhere and depositors will run on the banks in Spain, Italy and even the UK.
Germany is arguably in the safest position to defend against bank runs, but even its
banks are unwisely leveraged beyond reasonable ratios.

We are about to witness massive wealth destruction

It’s important to understand that fractional reserve banking wealth is a fictional
construct that does not exist in reality. Thus, the wealth created by fractional reserve
banking is nothing more than a mirage that can be destroyed literally overnight.

Importantly — and here’s the real point nobody is talking about — Russia may be
willing to let Cypriot banks collapse and lose a lot of money itself, knowing that
the aftermath of a collapse may set off a chain reaction of bank collapses across the
EU.

EU authorities seem to anticipate this possibility and they are already talking about
dropping Cyprus from the EU as quickly as possible. As Yahoo News reports:

The official also referred to the need to resolve the issue of Cyprus’s two biggest banks, both of which
are close to collapse, and mentioned the possibility of Cyprus leaving the eurozone. In the event of an
exit, the official said steps needed to be taken to “ring-fence” the rest of the eurozone from the impact
and to ensure there was no contagion to Greece.

“Contagion” is the right word, because if this situation doesn’t get resolved very, very
quickly, we may be witnessing the start of the collapse of the EU — an outcome that
would very well serve the political interests of Russia. So don’t expect Russia to try to
resolve any of this. It may be waiting in the wings and actually hoping to help set off a
kind of “bankageddon” that, once begun, will be impossible to stop.

Stedman Report

The fraud roll-out continues: Obamacare costing taxpayers twice as
much as originally claimed.

(NaturalNews) When he was selling the Affordable Care Act during his first term,
President Obama claimed that the government’s near-complete takeover of the
nation’s healthcare industry would be, well, affordable.

Everyone from the president on down in his administration and in the Democratic
leadership insisted that the naysayers and critics were wrong, that Obamacare would
not tank the nation by becoming another parasitic entitlement drain on the treasury.

Well, that was 2010. In 2013, fewer than three years later and as more and more
provisions of this monstrosity of a law take effect, Americans are beginning to feel
the full effect of exactly what then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,
meant when she said of Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find
out what is in it.”

Yes, healthcare is about to get a lot more expensive

Take the cost of Obamacare. When he was stumping for it, the president promised
Americans that, not only could the nation pay for it, but that it would cost around
$900 billion over the next decade.

As congressional and independent studies are now confirming; however, Obama’s
cost claims were grossly understated.

“President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion
over ten years on his health care law: ‘Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m
proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.’ Adding up all the different
spending provisions in the health care law; however, (including closing the
Medicare ‘doughnut hole,’ implementation costs, and other spending) total gross
spending over the FY 2010-19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates,”
explains the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff.

“And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until
2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six
years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from
FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted,” said the staff
report. “Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s
spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate
Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that
total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year
period (from FY2014-23) – not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised.”

Partisan sour grapes? You may have noted that the figures used by the GOP staff
report come from CBO (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office).

But there’s more.

The Economic Policy Journal notes that the cost of Obamacare won’t simply be limited
to higher medical costs:

The Joint Committee on Taxation recently released a 96-page report on the tax provisions associated
with Affordable Care Act. The report describes the 21 tax increases included in Obamacare,
totaling $1.058 trillion (our emphasis) – a steep increase from initial assessment, according to the
Tax Prof Blog. The summer 2012 estimate is nearly twice the $569 billion estimate produced at the
time of the passage of the law in March 2010.

WWFD: What would the founders do over all these new taxes?

Some of the increases, as compiled by the journal, include:

– New taxes on so-called “Cadillac,” or high-cost, insurance plans.

– A class warfare tax: Increased payroll and capital gains taxes on those making more
than $200,000 a year.

– Annual taxes on drug manufacturers and importers (a cost which will, of course, be
passed along to patients).

– Annual tax on health insurance providers (again, which will impact your rates -
another promise the president has broken).

– A 10 percent tax on tanning businesses.

– New fees on insured and self-insured health plans (to punish those who do not opt
for a government-run or approved insurance pool).

Yes, Obamacare will cost more than we were told and promised it would cost. A lot
more.

Sources:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jctpamphletmarch4.pdf

http://www.weeklystandard.com

OBAMACARE AND YOUR TAXES

The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, completely changed how
people get health care. With a big expansion of health insurance through mandatory
coverage requirements, tens of millions of uninsured Americans will find themselves
needing to get enrolled. Yet the impact of Obamacare goes beyond the health care
industry. New tax provisions associated with the Affordable Care Act have gone into
effect this year, and they could have a big impact on your taxes both in 2013 and in
future years.

What Obamacare did to your taxes?

Perhaps the biggest change in the law expanded the tax that workers currently pay for
Medicare to cover both higher amounts and different types of income. Until this year,
workers paid 1.45% of their wages in Medicare withholding taxes, with employers
paying another 1.45% out of their own pockets. Self-employed individuals paid the
combined 2.9% on their own. Although the amount of wages subject to Medicare
tax used to be limited in the same way as Social Security withholding. This changed
in 1991 and by 1994 the limits on wages subject to Medicare taxation were removed
entirely.

Going forward, though, Obamacare imposes additional Medicare taxes on certain
individuals. In particular, two groups will be affected:
• Joint filers with wages or other work-related earnings greater than $250,000
and singles earning more than $200,000 will have to pay an additional 0.9
percentage points in Medicare tax, bringing their total to 2.35% for employees
or 3.8% for self-employed workers. Employers are supposed to handle this
requirement in their withholding, but for two-earner couples, that may prove
impossible, as your employer will have no knowledge of what your spouse
earns.
• Those with total adjusted gross incomes of more than $250,000 for joint filers,
or $200,000 for singles, will have Medicare taxes imposed on their investment
income as well. On whatever amount of investments exceeds the $250,000
gross-income level, you’ll have to pay the full 3.8% surtax yourself.
The net effect on high-income earners will be to bring total top tax brackets to 43.4%
– the 39.6% regular tax amount plus the 3.8% Medicare tax.

Hitting lower-income workers

Those who earn less than the $200,000 and $250,000 thresholds shouldn’t assume that
their taxes will be unaffected by Obamacare. New limitations on flexible spending
arrangements will hit taxpayers of all income levels, limiting the amount you can set
aside tax-free in a flex plan to $2,500 per year. Previously, there was no technical
upper limit, although most employers imposed a $5,000 maximum. But for those who
have high levels of predictable medical expenses, the forced reduction in flex-plan use
could cost you hundreds of dollars in extra income, Social Security withholding, and
Medicare withholding taxes.

Moreover, those who rely on deducting medical expenses won’t be able to get as big
a tax benefit from them. Obamacare raised the floor on itemized medical expenses
from 7.5% of gross income to 10%. That may not sound like much, but it could
reduce your deduction by thousands of dollars and thereby increase your tax bill
substantially.

Will you get any benefit?

The question, of course, is whether Obamacare’s benefit will exceed the extra taxes
you’ll pay. The jury’s still out on that question, but one reason to be somewhat
skeptical is the extent to which health insurance stocks have raised lately. Industry
giants UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH ) and Humana (NYSE: HUM ) haven’t seen
big share-price advances, in part because of proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage
plans that will affect them particularly harshly. Yet with less exposure to the Medicare
Advantage market, peers Aetna (NYSE: AET ) and Cigna (NYSE: CI ) have risen
to 52-week highs on expectations that they’ll reap the benefits of greater numbers of
insured people. That in turn suggests that fewer of those benefits will be left for newly
covered individuals themselves.

Regardless, as you consider your taxes this year, don’t forget about the new
Obamacare provisions. Planning for them now could save you from a big headache
down the road.

By Robert Stedman

Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in

life and never stopped.

At 5, began studying under his cousin’s tutor.

At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.

At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.

At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.

At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.

At 23, started his law practice.

At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

At 31, wrote the widely circulated “Summary View of the Rights of British
America and retired from his law practice.

At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence.

At 33, took three years to revise Virginia’s legal code and wrote a Public
Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.

At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia, succeeding Patrick Henry.

At 40, served in Congress for two years.

At 41, was the American minister to France, and negotiated commercial treaties
with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.

At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.

At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American
Philosophical Society.

At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions, and became the active head of
Republican Party.

At 57, was elected the third president of the United States.

At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation’s size.

At 61, was elected to a second term as President.

At 65, retired to Monticello.

At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.

At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia, and served as its
first president.

At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of
Independence, along with John Adams

Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied the previous failed attempts
at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the
nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today.
Jefferson really knew his stuff. A voice from the past to lead us in the future.

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest
minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: “This is perhaps the
assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House
with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become
as corrupt as Europe.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are
willing to work and give to those who would not.”– Thomas Jefferson

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle
which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”– Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from
wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” –
Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too
much government.” — Thomas Jefferson

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is,
as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”– Thomas
Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots
and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he
disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”– Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their
currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that
will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their
children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

By Robert Stedman

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his
bill, and the barber replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community
service this week.’ The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went
to open his shop the next morning, there was a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen roses
waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber
again replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this
week.’ The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber
went to open up, there were a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen donuts waiting for him
at his door.

Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the
barber again replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community
service this week.’ The Congressman was very happy and left the shop. The next
morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen Congressmen lined
up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of
our country and the politicians who run it.

Views expressed are not endorsed or put forward by Turning Point USA

1) Only in America could the rich people – who pay 86% of all income taxes
– be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any
income taxes at all.

2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates
against black Americans when they have a black President, a black Attorney
General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black while only 12% of
the population is black.

3) Only in America could they have had the two people most responsible for
the tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and
Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn
out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4) Only in America can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and
have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by
the backlash.

5) Only in America would they make people who want to legally become
American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of
thousands of dollars for the privilege while discussing letting anyone who
sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.

6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and
sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as “extremists.”

7) Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a check
or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether
oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when
the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is
less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the
people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more
than it has per year – for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and
complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.

10) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a
$35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event.