Today’s POV blog

On 19 October 2009, the Obama administration announced new policy guidelines for federal prosecutors instructing them to cease arresting medical marijuana users and suppliers who are conforming to state laws.

Describing the new policy, two Justice Department officials said prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws. This policy is vastly different from that of the Bush administration that staunchly enforced federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Despite the announcement by the Obama administration, at an online town hall meeting in March of this year, Obama rejected the argument that legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana would be a good way to raise money in this recession. Obama did not elaborate with any particular details on his position.

Contrary to the opinion of Obama, in Colorado, Denver City Council members Chris Nevitt and Charlie Brown believe that the establishment of a city sales tax on medical marijuana sales could generate millions of dollars. “We’ve got to tax this damn thing at the city rate, which is 3.62 percent,” Brown told 420Butts.com.

There are currently fourteen states that allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington), and about a dozen more have considered or are considering it. Polls across America show broadening support for marijuana legalization.

On Tuesday, the American Medical Association announced that it has reversed its policy establishied in 1997 that marijuana should be classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD. The AMA now states that it will promote clinical research and development of cannabis-based medicines and alternative delivery methods. Despite the reversal, the AMA cautions, “This should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription-drug product.”

The American Medical Association has about 250,000 doctor members and as a body has urged the federal government to also reconsider its current classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use.

“This shift, coming from what has historically been America’s most cautious and conservative major medical organization, is historic,” said Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Dawn Dearden with the Drug Enforcement Administration said: “At this point, it’s still a Schedule I drug, and we’re going to treat it as such.” The Food and Drug Administration has yet to comment on the announcement by the AMA.

According to Wikipedia, value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST) is a consumption tax (CT) levied on any value that is added to a product. In contrast to sales tax, VAT is neutral with respect to the number of passages that there are between the producer and the final consumer; where sales tax is levied on total value at each stage, the result is downstream taxes levied on upstream taxes. A VAT is an indirect tax, in that the tax is collected from someone who does not bear the entire cost of the tax. VAT was invented because very-high sales taxes and tariffs encourage cheating and smuggling. Critics point out that it disproportionately raises taxes on middle- and low-income homes.

The Tax Policy Center states, “The U.S. budget is on an unsustainable path. That is because Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which together constituted almost one half of non-interest spending before the recent stimulus plan, are all growing faster than tax revenues. If these programs are not reformed, tax burdens raised, or other spending decimated, deficits and the national debt will explode.”

With recent changes to legislation, income tax seems to be on the decline. This year, according to CNN.com, 47% will pay no federal income tax. In addition, there will be some people who will get money from the government because of tax breaks and refunds. The majority of these are $30,000 a year households but it’s also about half of all households bringing in between $30,000 and $40,000.

While the middle income will dodge many taxes or get refunds, the wealthy and rich will take on the brunt of this program as President Obama has proposed increasing the tax burden of those families making more than $250,000 and those individuals who make more than $200,000.  Counting heads, there are far fewer wealthy than lower classes and experts say that there will not be enough money if we rely on this much smaller group of taxpayers.

In 2007, Chris Edwards posted this snapshot of average tax rate by income group in 1990, 2000, and 2005.

Average tax rates by income group

According to The Tax Policy Center, “To the extent that tax burdens are to be increased, there are three options. Tax rates could be raised in the existing system, but that would be extremely inefficient. Tax reform might raise revenues more efficiently, but that is excruciatingly difficult politically. That leaves the possibility of a brand new tax and a VAT is a very likely candidate.”

VAT tax isn’t the only option though, there’s also a flat tax to consider. Gather.com offers, “flat tax proposals would shift a sizable tax burden from the top 10% of personal taxpayers to the remaining 90%.”

Using information based IRS tax return data, total personal adjusted income (AGI) reported on all tax returns for 1980 to 2004 was slightly over $99 trillion on which Americans paid $13.5 trillion in Federal Income taxes.

In a snapshot, earners were taxed as follows:

• Top 10%: 20.56%
• Top 11-25%: 11.67%
• Top 25-50%: 9.27%
• Bottom 50%: 4.50%

If we average these rates, we come up with a net rate of 13.69%. By levying this flat rate across all taxpayers, top earners (the smallest tax-paying group) would save 6.87% and the bottom 50% (the largest group) would pay an additional 9.19%. In 1980, the top 1% of earners paid 34.47%, declining to 23.49% in 2004 and the average income for persons in this category increased from $147,651 in 1980 to $1,002,075 in 2004, a 679% increase. According to Gather.com, “If the flat tax rate of 13.69% is applied to 2004 tax returns, the average tax dollars for these top earners would decline from $235,387 to $137,184, providing an additional $98,203 in disposable income. Of course, that additional $98,203 would have to be covered by increased taxes on those of us not in the top 10%.”

The FairTax is yet another option. Described at FairTax.org, the FairTax levies taxes only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. It further abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax.

Let’s hope we can settle on something soon, or we’ll have to schedule another tea party.

American taxpayers picked up a $3 million tab for two trips to for the President and Mrs. Obama to lobby the IOC in favor of Chicago hosting the 2016 Olympics. (Mrs. Obama was raised in Chicago.) According to the article that appeared at CBSNews.com, this total does not include the aircraft used to fly the presidential limousines and Secret Service vehicles there as well.

Oprah Winfrey also found time to visit Copenhagen for her own lobbying effort.

Gathered on city streets Friday, thousands of other Chicago residents were shocked when their city lost in the first round and Rio de Janeiro was announced as the host.

Speculation on the loss was rampant and spanned the gamut from fear of the US being a target for terrorists to Michael Jordan’s absence in Copenhagen to Obama’s influence actually creating a negative effect. The Washington Post quoted psychology graduate student, Hunter Cox, saying, “Maybe Obama lobbied too hard and it hurt. The Olympic committee was making a statement that they’re just not going to let Obama come in and have his way.”

In August, a Chicago Tribune/WGN found that less than half the Chicago residents polled were in favor of hosting the Olympics, in spite of the years and millions of dollars that Chicago spent to try to win it.

In an effort to restrict tax credits used to pay for abortions, Senator Max Baucus (D, Montana) has penned a bill that has further delayed the progress of the health-care reform bill before congress. The abortion bill would allow exceptions only in the case of rape or incest or if the life of a pregnant woman were in danger.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), proposed even stricter provisions that would deny any money provided under the legislation could be used to cover “any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion.” Hatch’s version allowed almost no exceptions.

The proposal has been rejected by the Senate Finance Committee according to NYTimes.com; the 13-10 vote followed party lines with descending votes coming only from Senator Conrad (D, North Dakota) and Senator Snowe (R, Maine).

The bill proposes that health plans and abortion coverage would differ, but that private insurance plans permitting the coverage of abortion would be required to segregate money — taken from private premiums — to cover the procedure. Insured individuals could opt for a separate supplemental policy that would cover abortions, but that individuals would be responsible for opting for and paying the supplemental insurance offering such coverage.

In the last decade it seems that more people are quitting than starting. In fact, despite a significant decrease in the number of smokers, still more than 400,000 Americans die from tobacco-related illnesses every year. It is estimated that tobacco-related health-care costs exceed $100 billion annually. After a summer of government spending, that may seem like a drop in the bucket, but these numbers help to push up the cost of health insurance for all of us.

Though many long-term smokers believe that the damage has already been done, the American Cancer Society counsels us that within 12 hours of quitting, even a long-term smoker’s level of carbon monoxide can reduce to that of a non-smoker.

The longer, the better says the American Cancer Society — after ten years, many other health risks associated with smoking are reduced to a non-smoker’s level. Consider that quitting today you could rival the health of the average non-smoker on the topic of cancer, stroke, or heart disease risks.

According to LiveStrong.com, the average male smoker’s lifespan is reduced by 13.2 years and the average female smoker’s lifespan reduced by 14.5 years.

On 22 June 2009, President Obama signed legislation that gives the FDA regulatory power over the marketing and sale of tobacco. Known as the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, this law gives the FDA power to ban candy-flavored and fruit-flavored cigarettes among other marketing-messaging and product-content control.

With that law now in place, this week, federal health officials, banned the sale of flavored cigarettes in a story reported by NYTimes.com. They also have indicated that more limits may be in store against the far-larger market of flavored little cigars and cigarillos.

Many believe that flavored tobacco products are appealing and enticing to first-time smokers, including America’s younger generations. “These flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular smokers,” said Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, in announcing the ban.

Even with a notable reduction in the number of smokers, statistics found at AmericanHeart.org and other sites are alarming:

• In the United States, an estimated 26.2 million men (23.5%) and 20.9 million women (18.1%) are smokers.
• In 2004, 17-year-old smokers were more than three times as likely as those over the age of 25 to smoke flavored cigarettes, and they viewed flavored cigarettes as safer.
• Among whites, 23.5% of men and 18.8% of women smoke (2006).
• Among blacks, 26.1% of men and 18.5% of women smoke.
• Among Hispanics, 20.1% of men and 10.1% of women smoke.
• Among non-Hispanic Asians, 16.8% of men and 4.6% of women smoke.
• Among American Indians/Alaska Natives, 35.6% of men and 29.0% of women smoke.

Passive rulings such as public-area smoking bans may not be the best path though. According to a new study quoted at BioMedicine.org, “it has been observed that motivating people to give up smoking, after a cancer diagnosis, is not necessarily more effective than just ordering them to quit.”

By following two groups — those that received motivation therapy and those that were told to quit — even though motivation therapy involved more time, effort, and expense, it was not more effective. Here again, many believed that once they had already been diagnosed with a smoking-related illness, it was too late to quit, but since smoking restricts blood supply and collagen metabolism, quitting may help you to heal faster.

Dave Hitt, in his blog on the facts of second-hand smoke, sheds some light on the famous EPA study released in 1992 by exposing a number of misconceptions and misquotes in reference to this report.

For starters, the report claimed that second-hand smoke (SHS) causes 3,000 deaths a year, and for this reason SHS has been classified as a class A carcinogen. Although the study has been found incredibly faulty and was legally vacated, governmental agencies refer to it frequently to support their stances in all sorts of bans against smoking, for example the elimination or reduction of public-area smoking sections. In actuality, the exposure (for people who live and/or work in smoky environments) is about six cigarettes per year as supported by studies that measured actual exposure by having non-smokers wear monitors.

Whether or not the study is correct, it is widely accepted that smoking simply isn’t good for you and combined with other drugs, such as birth-control pills, it can be downright life threatening.

I am a former smoker and occasionally feel the need to indulge. I think of it like salt: no, it’s not good for me, but in moderation it’s a lot less dangerous than texting while driving.

According to their corporate web site, ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country.

In an sting operation that brings to mind your finest Saturday Night Live skit, ACORN employees were caught giving advice to persons they believed to be a pimp and prostitute on how to manipulate the system in order to receive funding for a house that they intended to use as a brothel and where they would employ underage girls from El Salvador.

According to New Jersey Voices blog, James O’Keefe, dressed as a pimp and accompanied by a scantily clad 20-year-old woman posing as a prostitute, visited ACORN offices. Employees in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, and California were video taped counseling O’Keefe on starting his business and manipulating income reporting to minimize tax liabilities. One ACORN employee paged through guidelines and finally settled on freelance performing artist as the proper job description for the prostitute. Later the pimp was counseled to consider claiming the brothel employees as dependents.

FOX News reported that on Friday two more employees were fired after a second video surfaced, less than 24 hours after the firings of the two ACORN officials from the Baltimore office.

The tapes, found in multiple postings on YouTube, have ignited calls for investigations. The United States Census Director has sent a letter to the National Headquarters of ACORN notifying the group that it will no longer help work on the 2010 census.

The video is seen as a serious setback for Obama, who has previously worked for ACORN, when he helped represent the organization in a 1995 lawsuit against Illinois that forced enactment of the motor-voter law (making it easier to register to vote). ACORN’s political-action committee endorsed Obama for president and his campaign gave an ACORN subsidiary $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities.

Quoting an article posted by the Associated Press this morning, “Republicans are using ACORN to portray Democrats as corrupt and distract Obama from his policy agenda, the same way Democrats used issues involving Halliburton, the giant government contractor and ex-employer of former Vice President Dick Cheney, against the GOP during the Bush years. Top Republicans from congressional leaders to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger want criminal probes of ACORN and conservative voters are pressuring news organizations for coverage.”

In response, and as reported by the Boston Globe, the House voted yesterday to deny federal funds for ACORN in a GOP-led strike just three days after the Senate voted 83 to 7 to deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN.

In the video, the ACORN staffer tells O’Keefe on how not to get caught by police. “Be careful. Train them to keep their mouths shut. Always keep your eyes in the back of your head.”