This explains some things: 24% of Americans thinks government has "plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars"

...to be “poor” in the 21st-century West is not to be hungry and emaciated but to be obese, with your kids suffering from childhood diabetes. When Michelle Obama turned up to serve food at a soup kitchen, its poverty-stricken clientele snapped pictures of her with their cellphones. In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. They are not so much without employment as without need of it. At a certain level, your hard-working bourgeois understands that the bulk of his contribution to the treasury is entirely wasted. It’s one of the basic rules of life: if you reward bad behaviour, you get more of it. But, in good and good-ish times, who cares?

By the way, where does the government get the money to fund all these immensely useful programs? According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.” You can hardly blame them for getting that impression in an age in which there is almost nothing the state won’t pay for. I confess I warmed to that much-mocked mayor in Doncaster, England, who announced a year or two back that he wanted to stop funding for the Gay Pride parade on the grounds that, if they’re so damn proud of it, why can’t they pay for it? He was actually making a rather profound point, but, as I recall, he was soon forced to back down. In Canada, almost every ethnocultural booster group is on the public teat. Outside Palestine House in Toronto the other week, the young Muslim men were caught on tape making explicitly eliminationist threats about Jews, but c’mon, everything else in Canada is taxpayer-funded, why not genocidal incitement? We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.

Under Obamacare NYC' s top rate would hit 57%

"Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.

New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.

The top rate in New York City, home to many of the state's wealthiest people, would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.

That means New York's top earners, small-business owners and most dynamic entrepreneurs will be facing new fees and penalties.

The $544 billion tax hike would violate one of President Obama's ironclad campaign promises: No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07162009/news/regionalnews/dem_health_rx_a_poion_pill_in_ny_179525.htm

Some Floridians are paying for cops twice

"After her sport utility vehicle sideswiped a van in early February, Shirley Kimel was amazed at how quickly a handful of police officers and firefighters in Winter Haven, Fla., showed up. But a real shock came a week later, when a letter arrived from the city billing her $316 for the cost of responding to the accident.

“I remember thinking, ‘What the heck is this?’ ” says Ms. Kimel, 67, an office manager at a furniture store. “I always thought this sort of thing was covered by my taxes.”

It used to be. But last July, Winter Haven became one of a few dozen cities in the country to start charging “accident response fees.” The idea is to shift the expense of tending to and cleaning up crashes directly to at-fault drivers. Either they, or their insurers, are expected to pay."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30162245/

My take:

This bold and imaginative maneuver by Winter Haven opens up unlimited possiblities for tax-loving politicians and bureaucrats. Coming soon: taxes on sunshine consumption, air that passes through your lungs, the space your body occupies, 911 calls, your personal wear on tear on roads and highways.

Assessment of these taxes will, of course, require unprecedented monitoring of your every move, the cost of which you will pay.

In short, we're all going to be New Yorkers.

Another liberal innovation: discretionary taxes

One of the mysteries of American politics has been the alacrity with which liberals rely on new taxes and increased tax rates to finance their endless catalogue of government favors and handouts to their ever-expanding list of client voters.

Now, a few weeks into the Obama administration, we have the answer: Liberals treat taxes as discretionary.

The first deadbeat to come forward was Timothy Geithner, an economist, who nevertheless was confirmed as President Barack Obama's Treasury secretary.

The second was Tom Daschle, a Washington lobbyist whom Obama nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, who withdrew today because of controversy over his untimely tax payments.

Now we have Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, and has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government..

"Nancy Killefer has decided to withdraw her nomination, and we accepted her withdrawal," Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday. The 55-year-old executive with consulting giant McKinsey & Co., was expected to explain her reasons for pulling out later in the day.

When her selection was announced by Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had filed a $946.69 tax lien on her home for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help.

Ironically, the current furore over tax deadbeats may be a blessing for the conservative cause. If liberals come to believe that they actually will have to pay the taxes they levy, perhaps they will be less enthusaistic about levying them.