Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America

by Matt Kibbe

77. Kirkpatrick, “White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost,” op. cit.

  78. Blumenthal, “The Legacy of Billy Tauzin,” op. cit.

  79. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan,” New York Times, Aug. 8, 2009.

  80. David Kirkpatrick and Duff Wilson, “Health Reform in Limbo, Top Drug Lobbyist Quits,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 2010.

  81. Wes Allison, “End no-bid contracts above $25,000: No sign of action,” Politifact.com, Jan. 6, 2010. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/30/end-no-bid-contracts-above-25000/.

  82. David Willman, “Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 2011.

  83. Will Rahn, “McCaskill asks for investigation into Obama administration’s sole-source vaccine contract,” Daily Caller, Nov. 24, 2011. http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/24/mccaskill-asks-for-investigation-into-obama-administrations-sole-source-vaccine-contract/.

  84. David Willman, op. cit.

  85. Ibid.

  86. Aaron Kiersh, “Pharmaceuticals / Health Products: Background,” OpenSecrets.org, Mar. 2010. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/background.php?cycle=2012&ind=H04.

  87. Ibid.

  88. Olga Pierce, “Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, With Billions at Stake,” ProPublica, Oct. 20, 2009. http://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020.

  89. General Electric, Ronald Reagan documentary. http://www.ge.com/reagan/video.html.

  90. Michael Reagan, “Ronald Reagan’s Son Remembers The Day When GE Fired His Dad,” Investor’s Business Daily, Feb. 4, 2011. http://news.investors.com/Article/562237/201102041911/Ronald-Reagans-Son-Remembers-The-Day-When-GE-Fired-His-Dad.htm?p=2.

  91. Timothy P. Carney, “Obamanomics: General Electric Wins Big with the White House,” op. cit.

  Chapter 8: Scrap the Code

  1. Steven Bertoni, “Warren Buffett Biggest Money Loser On Forbes 400,” Forbes, Sept. 22, 2011.

  2. Arthur B. Kennickell, “Tossed and Turned: Wealth Dynamics of U.S. Households, 2007–2009,” U.S. Federal Reserve website. http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201151/201151pap.pdf (accessed Dec.20, 2011).

  3. Warren E. Buffett, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” New York Times, Aug. 15, 2011.

  4. Jake Tapper, “President Obama to Propose Millionaire’s Tax Called ‘Buffett Rule,’” ABC News, Sept. 17, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/president-obama-to-propose-millionaires-tax-called-buffett-rule/.

  5. Brad Knickerbocker, “Obama pushes ‘Buffett Rule’ to tax the wealthy. GOP cries ‘class warfare!,’” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 18, 2011.

  6. Berkshire Hathaway’s 2010 Annual Report on page 56 notes: “At Dec. 31, 2010 . . . net unrecognized tax benefits were $1,005 million,” or $1.005 billion. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2010ar/2010ar.pdf.

  7. ‘WarrenBuffett, hypocrite,” New York Post, Aug. 28, 2011.

  8. Ross Boettcher, “Warren Watch: Tax Case,” Omaha World-Herald, Sept. 4, 2011.

  9. Ibid.

  10. “The Most Serious Problems Encountered by Taxpayers,” Internal Revenue Service. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/2010arcmsp1_taxreform.pdf.

  11. “Commissioner of Internal Revenue Douglas H. Shulman’s Keynote Speech Before the AICPA Fall Tax Meeting,” press release, Internal Revenue Service, Oct. 26, 2010. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=229675,00.html.

  12. Berkshire Hathaway Lobbying Data 2010, OpenSecrets.org. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021757&year=2010.

  13. David Keating, “A Taxing Trend: The Rise in Complexity, Forms, and Paperwork Burdens,” NTU Policy Paper 128, National Taxpayers Union, Apr. 18, 2011. http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/taxes/tax-reform/complexity.html, p. 2.

  14. “The Most Serious Problems Encountered by Taxpayers,” Internal Revenue Service.

  15. Ibid.

  16. SOI Tax Stats—Individual Statistical Tables by Tax Rate and Income Percentile, Internal Revenue Service. http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html.

  17. Contract from America. www.contractfromamerica.org.

  18. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826, 1899, pp. 40–41.

  19. James Madison, “Property,” Mar. 29, 1792, in William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, Mar. 29, 1792, Doc. 23, vol. 1, ch. 16 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962–77, vols. 1–10).

  20. Revenue Act of 1861, sec. 49, 12 Stat. 292, at 309, Aug. 5, 1861.

  21. TaxAnalysts, “Tax History Museum: 1861–1865.” http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1861?OpenDocument.

  22. David G. Davies, United States Taxes and Tax Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 22.

  23. Pollack v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601 (1895).

  24. Quoted text is from the Revenue Act of 1861. The Civil War income tax was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court in Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586 (1881). The Court ruled that the tax, which had expired in 1872, was an excise (i.e., an indirect tax) and neither a head tax nor a real-estate or property tax (i.e., it was not a direct tax).

  25. Pollack v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601 (1895), dissenting opinion of Justice Henry Billings Brown. In his dissent, Justice Brown railed: “The [Court’s] decision involves nothing less than the surrender of the taxing power to the moneyed class. . . . Even the spectre of socialism is conjured up to frighten Congress from laying taxes upon the people in proportion to their ability to pay them.” A year later, in 1896, Brown would assure a place for himself in history by authoring the opinion of the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial discrimination in public transportation and popularized the term “separate but equal.”

  26. U.S. Constitution, Amendment XVI (1913).

  27. Louis Alan Talley, “Federal Taxation: An Abbreviated History,” CRS Report on History of Federal Taxes, Jan. 19, 2001. http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/2D52A4CFD2844FAB85256E22007840E6?OpenDocument.

  28. Tax Foundation, “U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, 1913–2011 (Nominal and Inflation-Adjusted Brackets).” Accessed Mar. 5, 2012. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/151.html.

  29. Quoted in TaxAnalysts, “Tax History Museum, 1901–32: The Income Tax Arrives.” http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1901?OpenDocument.

  30. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “History of the U.S. Tax System.” http://www.policyalmanac.org/economic/archive/tax_history.shtml.

  31. Ibid.

  32. G. Davies, United States Taxes and Tax Policy, p. 24, op. cit.

  33. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “History of the U.S. Tax System.”

  34. Davies, United States Taxes and Tax Policy, op. cit.

  35. Historical Top Tax Rate, Tax Facts, Tax Policy Center, Jan. 31, 2011 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=213&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=22.

  36. Peter Sperry, “The Real Reagan Economic Record: Responsible and Successful Fiscal Policy.” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, Mar. 1, 2001. No. 1414.

  37. J. D. Foster, “Tax Cuts, Not the Clinton Tax Hike, Produced the 1990s Boom,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1835. Accessed Dec. 26, 2011. www.heritage.org/research/taxes/wm1835.cfm.

  38. “Federal Income Tax is Highly Progressive After Recent Cuts,” Joint Economic Committee. Research Report 109–36, May 2006.

  39. Duanjie Chen and Jack Mintz, “New Estimates of Effective Corporate Tax Rates on Business Investment,” Cato Institute Tax & Budget Bulletin, No. 64 Feb. 2011.

  40. Lauren Fox, “‘Dubious Distinction’ for U.S. Corporate Tax Rate,” US News, Mar. 1, 2012. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/03/01/dubious-distinction-for-us-corporate-tax-rate.

  41. Global 500, CNN Money. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global
500/2010/full_list/index.html.

  42. “Tax Compliance Challenges to Corporate Tax Enforcement and Options to Improve Securities Basis Reporting: Statement of David M. Walker Comptroller General of the United States,” GAO 2006.

  43. John McCormack, “GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 billion in Profits,” The Weekly Standard Blog, Nov. 17, 2011. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ge-filed-57000-page-tax-return-paid-no-taxes-14-billion-profits_609137.html.

  44. “Study of the Overall State of the Federal Tax System and Recommendations for Simplification, Pursuant to Section 8022(3)(B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986,” Joint Committee on Taxation, Apr. 2001. http://www.house.gov/jct/s-3-01vol1.pdf.

  45. “About the IRS Form 1040,” PRAComment.gov. http://www.pracomment.gov/About-the-PRA-Initiative/about1040.

  46. Congressional Committees Database, OpenSecrets.org. http://www.opensecrets.org/cmteprofiles/index.php.

  47. Robert E. Hall and Alvin Rabushka, The Flat Tax (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1995), p. 84. http://www.hoover.org/publications/books/8329.

  48. Laurence Kotlikoff, “The Economic Argument for a Flat Tax,” Testimony before The Joint Economic Committee, May 17, 1995.

  49. Veronique de Rugy, “Tax Rates and Tax Revenue The Mellon Income Tax Cuts of the 1920s,” Tax and Budget Bulletin, Cato Institute, Feb. 2003. http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0302-13.pdf.

  50. Daniel Mitchell, Ph.D., “The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates,” Heritage Foundation, Aug. 13 2003. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/08/the-historical-lessons-of-lower-tax-rates.

  51. John McManus, “U2 criticism sits uncomfortably alongside low tax rate obsession,” Irish Times, June 27, 2011. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0627/1224299635130.html.

  52. Ralph Vartabedian, “Estimate of Heinz Fortune Doubled,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2004.

  53. Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, “Sen. John Kerry skips town on sails tax,” Boston Herald, July 23, 2010.

  54. Donovan Slack, “Kerry will pay Mass. tax on R.I. yacht,” Boston Globe, July 28, 2010. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/28/kerry_will_pay_mass_tax_on_ri_yacht/.

  55. Matt Negrin, “Bono advises Obama on poverty,” Politico, Apr. 30, 2010. http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0410/stuck_in_a_meeting_ba03afe5-8545-45e1-9423-7af263885048.html.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Daniel Anderson, “ObamaCare: Burned by the Tanning Tax,” FreedomWorks blog, Feb. 8, 2012. http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/daniel-anderson/obamacare-burned-by-the-%E2%80%9Ctanning-tax%E2%80%9D.

  Chapter 9: A Standard of Value

  1. Phil Mattingly and Robert Schmidt, “Monetary Policy: Fed Critic Ron Paul’s Power Play,” Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 2, 2010. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_50/b4207035613107.htm.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, Liberty Fund Inc., 1981.

  4. Carl Menger, Principles of Economics, New York University Press, 1976: p. 257.

  5. Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, op. cit.

  6. “Smoke ’Em if You Got ’Em: Cigarette Black Markets in U.S. Prisons and Jails.” http://tpj.sagepub.com/content/81/2/142.abstract, p. 623.

  7. For more on the subject, see Matt Kibbe, “Mind, Historical Time and the Value of Money: A Tale of Two Methods,” Market Process 6, no. 1 (Spring 1988).

  8. Richard Ebeling, “Free Market Money—Instead of Political Manipulation,” The Future of Freedom Foundation. http://www.fff.org/freedom/0290b.asp.

  9. Lawrence H. White, “Competing Money Supplies,” Library of Economics and Liberty. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CompetingMoneySupplies.html.

  10. Ludwig von Mises, “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War.” (orig. 1944). Reprinted by Liberty Fund Press, 2011.

  11. Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Executive Order 6102—Requiring Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates to Be Delivered to the Government,” Apr. 5, 1933. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14611.

  12. Ralph Benko, “U.S. Elites Begin to Confront The Paper Dollar,” Forbes, Aug. 29, 2011. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2011/08/29/u-s-elites-begin-to-confront-the-paper-dollar/.

  13. Detlev S. Schlichter, “Forty Years of Paper Money,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 15, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576500811399421094.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

  14. Lewis E. Lehrman, “It’s Not the Debt Ceiling—It’s the Dollar,” American Spectator, June 9, 2011. http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/09/its-not-the-debt-ceiling-its-t/print.

  15. Edmund Conway, “Abandoning the gold standard was a seminal moment, and one we’re now all paying for,” Telegraph, Aug. 13, 2011.

  16. Jon Stewart, “QE2: We’re Not Printing Money, We’re ‘Imagineering’ Money,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 2010.

  17. Overview of the Federal Reserve System. http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_1.pdf#page=4.

  18. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Cosmo Classics, 1919.

  19. Jonathan Sibun, “Inflation: History shows we’ve got it easy,” Telegraph, Nov. 16, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8135039/Inflation-History-shows-weve-got-it-easy.html

  20. “R.I.P. Zimbabwe Dollar,” Cato Institute. http://www.cato.org/zimbabwe.

  21. “Zimbabwe inflation ‘incalculable,’” BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7115651.stm.

  22. “A crisis it can’t paper over,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2008.

  23. “Zimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note,” CNN. http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-16/world/zimbawe.currency_1_zimbabwe-dollar-south-african-rand-dollar-note?_s=PM:WORLD.

  24. Sibun, “Inflation: History shows we’ve got it easy,” op. cit.

  25. “Zimbabwe’s Novel Currency,” Freakonomics. http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/04/24/zimbabwes-novel-currency/.

  26. George J.W. Goodman, “The German Hyperinflation, 1923,” Commanding Heights. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_germanhyperinflation.html.

  27. Ibid.

  28. “Terms of the Treaty of Versailles,” BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/thetreatyrev1.shtml.

  29. “Germany Set to Make Final World War I Reparation Payment,” ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/International/germany-makes-final-reparation-payments-world-war/story?id=11755920#.TvfZCTUeO8A.

  30. “Better as Wallpaper: Weimar Republic Papiermark (1922-1923),” Life. http://www.life.com/gallery/60591/image/2643031/failed-currencies#index/6.

  31. Ibid.

  32. “Washington’s Top 5 Missed Opportunities in 2011,” Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/20/washingtons-top-5-missed-opportunities-in-2011/.

  33. Interview, Meet the Press, Aug. 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-_N0Cwg5iN4.

  34. Overview of Federal Reserve System. http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_1.pdf#page=4.

  35. “Achieving a Stable Dollar,” Free Banking. http://www.freebanking.org/2011/10/06/achieving-a-stable-dollar/.

  36. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 20, Section 9, Contemporary Books, 3rd Revised Edition, 1966.

  37. Peter Schiff “Mortgage Bankers Speech,” Nov. 13, 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k&feature=youtube.

  38. Federal Reserve Board, Selected Interest Rates, Historical Data. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data.htm.

  39. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National).” http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=CE_cesbref1.

  40. “Global Economy ‘as Strong as I’ve Seen,’ Paulson Says,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 6, 2007. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/03/06/global-economy-as-strong-as-ive-ever-seen-says-paulson
/

  41. “Dow, S&P break records,” CNN Money. http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/09/markets/markets_0500/index.htm.

  42. Rick Ferri, “Thank Goodness for Index Funds,” Forbes, Dec. 19, 2011. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2011/12/19/thank-goodness-for-index-funds/.

  43. “After the Crash,” Economist, Aug. 2011. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/us-stockmarket-declines-and-gdp.

  44. Henry Hazlitt, What You Should Know About Inflation (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1965).

  45. “Jobless Rate Falls to 9.7%, Giving Hope Worst Is Over,” New York Times, Feb. 2, 2006.

  46. Thomas Sowell, “Fed Up with the Fed.” http://www.creators.com/opinion/thomas-sowell/fed-up-with-the-fed.html.

  47. Cleveland Fed. http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/data/credit_easing/index.cfm.

  48. Simon Johnson and James Qwak, 13 Bankers, Pantheon, 2010.

  49. Ibid.

  50. John Mason, “Monetaray [sic] Policy in 2011: Looking Back,” Wall Street Pit, Jan. 6, 2012. http://wallstreetpit.com/88418-monetaray-policy-in-2011-looking-back.

  51. Robert E. Lucas Jr., “The U.S. Recession of 2007-201?” Millman Lecture, May 19, 2011. http://www.econ.washington.edu/news/millimansl.pdf.

  52. Consumer Price Index—Jan. 2012, Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm.

  53. “Inflation Nation,” New York Times, May 3, 2009.

  54. Gerald O’Driscoll, “The Federal Reserve’s Covert Bailout of Europe,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 28, 2011.

  55. “Fed’s $16 trillion Dollar Secret Slush Fund Props Up Our Way Of Life,” Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/feds-16-trillion-dollar-secret-slush-fund-props-up-our-way-of-life-2011-7#ixzz1hgHQxuwi.

  56. Ron Paul, “The Fed Undermines Foreign Policy.” http://news.goldseek.com/RonPaul/1301932800.php.

  57. “The Countdown Begins: Just One Hour Until The Fed Releases Bailout Documents,” Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-countdown-begins-just-one-hour-until-the-fed-releases-bailout-documents-2010-12

  58. “Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak,” Bloomberg News. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-most-as-bernanke-kept-borrowers-secret.html.