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Burlington Iowa Obituaries West Burlington

Obituaries

Donna Solotko Hanson, 65, Davenport, formerly Burlington, died Wednesday, April 3, 2013

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Burlington Iowa News Political West Burlington

Obama Targets Retirement Accounts

Click Here: President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much individuals can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

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Burlington Iowa Obituaries West Burlington

Obituaries

Connie Sue Giffin Miller, 61, Burlington died Thursday, April 4, 2013

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Burlington Iowa News Political West Burlington

State Issues from Tom Sands

News from the Hill…

One of the phrases that keeps getting repeated here at the capitol is, “This is one of the strangest session years I have seen.”  The number of bills that have been filed and moving through the process is greatly reduced from prior sessions.  This was the second funnel week and usually committee meetings go into the evening.  This year, many of the committee meetings are being cancelled.  There is approximately 4 weeks left of session, only one of the budget bills have come over from the Senate.  Each year the House starts half of the budget bills and the Senate starts the other half.  The House has passed most of the bills we were to begin and the Senate has only passed one budget bill and that wasn’t until April 3.  Bills are sitting in the Senate!

 Iowa Inheritance Tax…

Iowa does not have an estate tax; it has an inheritance tax for the heirs of an estate.  Presently, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, children, stepchildren, grandchildren, great grandchildren and other lineal ascendants and lineal descendants are exempt from Iowa Inheritance Tax.  However, all other heirs would have to pay Iowa Inheritance Tax.  This can be quite burdensome and result in the liquidation of assets to pay the Federal Estate tax and Iowa Inheritance Tax.  This is not right and unfairly discriminates against step grandchildren and step great grandchildren.  My personal belief is there should not be any tax on Inheritance.  But that does not seem possible to get passed in the Senate.  Therefore, we will be moving a bill out of committee that exempts the first two million dollars for each heir and a flat rate for inheritance over two million dollars.  But lineal ascendants and lineal descendants would still be totally exempt.

Ways and Means Committee…

One of the bills we passed out of the Ways and Means Committee this week was HSB 225, which is now HF 625. This bill is an act relating to the School Tuition Organization (STO) Tax Credit by allowing the tax credit for contributions made by certain entities, increasing the amount of total approved tax credits.  Presently the Tax Credit cap is $8.75 million; this bill raises the cap to $12 million effective for tax year 2014.  The bill also amends the STO Tax Credit to allow a contribution made by a partnership, LLC, S Corporation, estate or trust electing to have the income taxed directly to the individual to qualify for the tax credit.  This provision of the bill is retroactive to January 1, 2013.

 State Revenue Growth…

LSA released the latest 2013 Revenue report Monday afternoon.  While actual revenue continues to outpace the projections of the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC), the pace of growth was not as robust as had been seen in the past two months.

State revenue in March 2013 actually fell 5.8 percent or $21.8 million as compared to March last year.  Annual revenue growth still remains strong, running at 7.8 percent over FY 2012.  This is still above the revised REC projection for the year of 5.2 percent growth.

While some may point to the drop in March revenue as a sign of a slowing Iowa economy, other factors may be the cause.  Due to not completing action on federal tax policy until after the New Year, Congress provided a one-time extension on when farmers had to file their taxes.  Instead of being required to file by March 1, farmers were given until April 15.  This change is believed to be one of the reasons that personal income tax collections fell in March by $34.9 million as compared to last year.

On an annual basis, personal income tax revenue growth is now running below the REC projection.  REC has estimated this category will grow by 8.9 percent, while the number through March is 7.6 percent growth.  Due to the filing date change, April will present a clearer picture on the personal income trend.

Sales and Use tax also declined in March.  Revenue from this category fell by 3 percent over last March.  This pulled down the annual growth number to 2.5%.  The REC projected growth of 3.1%.

On the positive side, corporate income tax revenue turned positive again in March.  Corporate tax collections grew by 12.1 percent over last March.  That, combined with the strong end to 2012 has the annual growth rate climbing to 11.1 percent.  This is significantly higher than the revised REC projection of 6.5 percent growth for FY 2012.

The individual Income Tax supplies about 50% of the general fund revenues and Sales and Use Tax supplies an additional one 30%.  These two categories have a major impact on Iowa general fund revenues.

The conflicting March numbers still have Iowa’s economy growing.  April’s numbers will either confirm that this was an anomaly created by Washington or that the state’s strong economic growth of the past two years is starting to moderate.

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.  It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

Ronald Reagan

For more information on these and other bills:  www.legis.iowa.gov

-Tom Sands

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Burlington Iowa Letters to Falcon West Burlington

Failed Government

Falcon:

I saw a movie the other night titled “The Company Men” a story of three men who try to survive during a year in which their company undergoes corporate downsizing.  The movie was made in 2010 and stars Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner.

The movie is a real eye opener about what many people endure in bad economic times such as the last few years have been for many American that have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Most of the people who lost their jobs can blame it on the government of our country that let everyone down by not performing their duties and/or failing to perform at anything other than taking their unearned pay checks and benefits.  Reelecting failures seems to be the norm for American voters who elect people on what party they belong to rather than what they know and what they can do.  Something like 90 percent of congress is reelected year after year and this is a congress that has failed Americans year after year plus we have a president that was reelected based on nothing but his ability to read speeches off a teleprompter.

A good example of failed government is Fanny and Freddy both of which are still billions in the red and should have been shut down years ago but they are probably still donating thousands of dollars to unscrupulous politicians while taking home large unearned pay checks.  Nothing congress or government does works very well anymore and I doubt it ever will until the people actually clean house in Washington, something that is years overdue.

Our government fails to enforce gun laws currently on the books and then wants to pass other gun laws to water down the second amendment and this is the same government that put thousands of automatic weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels that resulted in the death of an American border guard and thousands of Mexicans.  Of course they then lied about knowing anything about it and their still lying through one of the most inept Attorney Generals our country has ever had, the same one that doesn’t enforce immigration laws and gun laws currently on the books.

We also have many immigration laws that the government just ignores and now claims their working on another set of laws while they never enforced the laws of previous administrations.  The current administration just does what it wants because the congress just sits there and lets the administration shred the constitution through executive orders and appointment of radical types to Czar Jobs bypassing congress.

What we have is a president and a congress that has duped the young, entitlement crowd, do nothings, college students and many others to get reelected.  They prey on those that know little about government and only care about what they will get for nothing that’s robbed from the taxpayers who actually work for a living.  Most of them don’t even know who the Vice President is or who their congressmen are but they know plenty about how to get the free money, food, phones, free housing, college loans and the rest of the stuff handed out by Obama to get their votes.

Take a look at recent gun violence that the liberal media are so blatantly biased, hypocritical, and censorial that it’s nauseating.  This is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in their coverage of mass shootings or terrorism.

Whether it be the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing or the more recent shootings in Tucson, Aurora, or now Newtown, the liberal media do everything possible to pin the blame on conservatives and/or exploit the tragedies to advance a left-wing agenda, such as more gun control.

They had no evidence to tie conservatives to those terrible events; they just smeared conservatives by outright lying.

But when facts surfaced exposing the liberal views of California cop-killer Chris Dorner, and then a direct link between Floyd Corkins, who shot up the Family Research Council, and the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center and radical gay politics, the liberal media went mum.  They said nothing or nearly nothing—minimal and selective reporting.

Because of ignorant people and a very poor educational system America has become nothing more than a has been of what it once was.  We once had an America that worked and produced world class products that were sold all over the world.  An America that has been sold off to the foreign countries because of the so called world economy which is nothing more than an excuse used by failed government that has sold out our country to the Chinese and other countries, a government that in all reality is just as rotten as any other third world country.

We have a nonfunctioning government of overpaid over benefitted bureaucrats that have no concept of what they should be doing and have no idea about the oath most of them took both elected and hired incompetents.

We now have a government that honors the incompetent non-productive citizens while deploring those that are contributing to the American way of life.

For an article detailing many of the mass shooters please go to this web site:

http://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-last-20-years-shares-psychotropic-drugs/#axzz2PXYfaeKz

Connecticut hasn’t solved any of the mass shooting problems with their new gun laws because they haven’t even touched on the root cause of the gun violence at all.  Liberalism just can’t figure out the real root cause of most of these mass shootings because their brains just can’t fathom the fact they’re the main cause themselves along with their arrogant political, educational and feel good irresponsible way of life.

JH

 

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Burlington Iowa News West Burlington

ObamaCare in Trouble?

Click Here: Exchange provision delayed, as lawmakers push to repeal another

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Burlington Iowa Obituaries West Burlington

Obituaries

Jack C. Trail, 79, of West Burlington died Monday, April 1, 2013

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Burlington Iowa News Political West Burlington

Washington Post gives Obama 3-Pinocchios for falsely claiming “40% of all gun sales don’t require a background check under current law”

Click Here: Washington Post says, “We were willing to cut the White House some slack, given the paucity of recent data. But the president’s failure to acknowledge the significant questions about these old data, or his slippery phrasing, leaves us little choice but to downgrade this claim to Three Pinocchios.”

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Burlington Iowa News Political West Burlington

UN goes for Guns

Click Here: Gun rights advocates fear U.N. treaty will lead to U.S. registry

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Burlington Iowa Letters to Falcon West Burlington

Worst of Obama is yet to hit

Falcon:

I see where Obama is now going to teach American citizens how to budget their money when he himself knows nothing about living within a budget, proven by the fact he’s not produced one since being in office and the debt he’s accumulating.

Here’s the oath he took when elected:  “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  He’s failed over and over again to protect and defend the constitution.

We already have laws about guns that are not enforced and we have numerous laws regarding immigration that go unenforced by Mr. Obama and he has the nerve to sue states that try to enforce our immigration laws already on the federal books.  At best he only pays lip service to the constitution when he needs to cover his rear end.

Mr. Obama is far from preserving, protecting and defending our Constitution and has tried on many occasions to disregard it totally.  Mr. Obama is a left wing liberal with no prior training for anything much more than reading a teleprompter and that’s been proven over and over again.  People that believe in Obama are nothing more than fools and have been duped into thinking he’s some sort of messiah thanks to a crop of sick left wing lying journalist misfits working for the press and network news most of which are run by left wing radical management teams.

Just hang on because the worst of Obama is yet to hit us and when it does it will be  over for the American way and history will have repeated itself again as it has for all past world powers such as Rome and England along with others over the years.

HG