Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America (46 page)

68.
Jim Drinkard, “Drugmakers go furthest to sway Congress,”
USA Today
, Apr. 25, 2005.

69.
Paul Blumenthal, “The Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House–PhRMA Deal,” Sunlight Foundation, Feb. 12, 2010. http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2010/02/12/the-legacy-of-billy-tauzin-the-white-house-phrma-deal/.

70.
Ibid.

71.
Jeanne Cummings, “Wielding influence in health care fight,”
Politico,
Dec. 25 2009. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=BD18F267-18FE-70B2-A8F5960026D227DF.

72.
David D. Kirkpatrick, “White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost,”
New York Times,
Aug. 5, 2009.

73.
Cummings, “Wielding influence in health care fight,”
op. cit.

74.
Alicia Mundy, “White House Assures Drug Makers on Reimportation,”
Wall Street Journal,
July 7, 2009.

75.
Tom Hamburger, “Activists say poor nations’ access to affordable drugs stymied,”
Los Angeles Times,
Aug. 20, 2009.

76.
Ryan Grim, “Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma,”
Huffington Post,
Sept. 13, 2009, updated May 25, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html.

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/global500/2010/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.