By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Instead of raising taxes, Obama creates new taxes

Fiscal Policy: Given the number of new tax ideas making the rounds, you’d think we were in a rip-roaring expansion. But we’re not, and new taxes are exactly the wrong thing to be proposing.

In addition to kicking up taxes on the so-called wealthy, various members of the current administration seem to have lots of new ideas for separating Americans from their money.

Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s top aide, is health care adviser to Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag. He wants a 10% value-added tax (VAT), similar to the European Union’s, to “pay” for health care reform.

It’s called value-added, but it’s really value subtracted — a tax imposed on each level of production, from raw goods to consumers.

In Congress, meanwhile, Democrats are pushing for an Internet tax and a cap-and-trade tax on energy use. They want more money. What better way than to tax something people now use for free?

No question, if current spending plans remain in place, the federal government will need a lot more money.

By LARRY ELDER, Investors Business Daily

Watch what he does, not what he says

The topic: “The Future of Capitalism.” To discuss this, Time magazine assembled a “stellar cast.”

One such “honoree” works as a Public Broadcasting Service/National Public Radio host. The tax dollars produced by the capitalism he criticizes help pay his salary. (The irony was apparently lost.)

At least other “business roundtable” panelists — commentator/publisher/author Arianna Huffington and singer John Legend — make their money the old-fashioned way, by enticing consumers to buy what they sell.

“I don’t think that left to its own devices,” the taxpayer-supported broadcaster/pundit said, “capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody’s got to look over the shoulder of that child.” Good grief.

Every dollar spent by government is one less dollar spent by taxpayers. Money comes from somewhere — taxes, borrowing (taxes on layaway) or printing, which, if not offset by productivity, causes inflation, a stealth tax on everyone.

By Paul Harris and Robin McKie, The Observer

500 plus will junket with Obama to Europe

With an entourage of 500 staff, an armour-plated limousine and a fleet of decoy helicopters, America’s new president will arrive for his first visit to Britain amid huge razzmatazz on Tuesday for the G20 summit. But it will be his closed-door meetings with world leaders that are likely to prove the most significant of the tripBritain will get its first chance to see Barack Obama this week when a White House cavalcade – complete with armoured limousines, helicopters, 200 US secret service staff and a six-doctor medical team – sweeps into the UK.

Obama will fly into London for his first visit to the UK as president of the United States on Tuesday to take part in the G20 summit in the capital’s Docklands area. He will not be travelling light.

More than 500 officials and staff will accompany the president on his tour this week – along with a mass of high-tech security equipment, including the $300,000 presidential limousine, known as The Beast. Fitted with night-vision camera, reinforced steel plating, tear- gas cannon and oxygen tanks, the vehicle is the ultimate in heavy armoured transport.

In addition, a team from the White House kitchen will travel with the president to prepare his food. As one official put it: “When the president travels, the White House travels with him, right down to the car he drives, the water he drinks, the gasoline he uses, the food he eats. America is still the sole superpower and the president must have the ability to handle any crisis, anywhere, any time.”

By Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters

A public furor over big bonuses paid by firms bailed out with U.S. taxpayer money is fueling resistance to President Barack Obama’s ambitious plans to extend government intervention in the U.S. private sector.

Republican opponents say his commitment of huge sums to try to revive the ailing economy is driven by a philosophical belief in greater government intrusion in many areas, from healthcare to education, dubbing it socialism.

Obama is pursuing these policies just 13 years after President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat, disarmed Republican opponents by declaring: “The era of big government is over.”

As the enormous cost of the Obama’s effort to stimulate the economy grows, many are weighing just how far government should be extending its powers.

By Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Rush is Speaking the truth and deserves support

Here we go again. Rush Limbaugh is public enemy No. 1.Liberal bloggers and media chin-strokers are aghast at Limbaugh’s statement that he hopes Barack Obama fails.

Well, given what Obama wants to do, I hope he fails too. Of course I want the financial crisis to end — who doesn’t? But Obama’s agenda is much more audacious. Pretty much every major news outlet in the country has said as a matter of objective analysis that Obama wants to repeal the legacy of Ronald Reagan and remake the country as a European welfare state. And yet people are shocked that conservatives, Limbaugh included, want Obama to fail in this effort?