Hollywood Welfare Paid by Taxpayers

George Clooney’s film, Argo, received $6.21 million in tax credits

Via Forbes: Even as the Hollywood glitterati ruminate about social responsibility and the need for the wealthy “one percent” to pay their “fair share,” Hollywood millionaires and moguls are bagging an estimated $1.51 billion in tax revenues annually through something called “film tax credits.” Consider a few of this year’s Oscar nominated films. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Institute, Quentin Tarantino’s controversial spaghetti Western, Django Unchained, featuring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio has applied to receive an estimated $8.4 million in film tax credits from the State of Louisiana. Actor-director Ben Affleck and producer George Clooney’s film, Argo, received $6.21 million in tax credits from the California Film Commission. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, and Tommy Lee Jones, hauled in $3.5 million in tax-free film credits. Silver Linings Playbook bagged a cool $5.6 million. Indeed, 40 states now have some form of subsidy or incentive that allow filmmakers to defray income and/or sales taxes incurred during filming. Thirteen states even offer so-called “transferrable film tax credits” that allow filmmakers to convert unused credits into cash—at taxpayer expense, of course. [...] [T]ax and policy analysts who have studied film tax credit programs say industry claims of job creation are vastly overstated. Worse, say critics, they drain vital state resources from things like education and healthcare. [...] What’s more, the Tax Foundation says “that states lose money by offering tax credits for film production” and that “movie production incentives are costly and fail to live up to their promises” because “they create mostly temporary positions with limited options for upward mobility.”

RELATED - Hollywood’s Pious Hypocrisy

OBAMA 2011: Wanted Sequester Cuts. OBAMA 2013: Against Them (Video)

OBA-MANIPULATION

2011 Obama defends automatic spending cuts (Nov. 21, 2011): “Already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. My message to them is simple: No.” “I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.” 2013 Obama predicts Armageddon if sequester cuts go through (Feb. 19, 2013): “So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs.”

(H/t: TheRightScoop.com)

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Obama’s is the Worst Economic Recovery in History (Graph, GDP Data)

“Obama has presided over the worst multi-year recovery in American history since the end of World War II,” CNSNews found using public economic data. During Obama’s so-called economic recovery, the economy grew only 7.5% while other post-recession periods saw double-digit growth from 11.7% to 51.2%. “From the end of the last recession in June 2009 until the fourth quarter of 2012, the economy grew only 7.5 percent, increasing from $12.7 trillion to $13.6 trillion,” explains CNSNews. We prepared graphs and tables to illustrate how weak Obama’s economic recovery has been. (Sources: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since 1949 and NBER’s List of U.S. Recessions.)

RECESSION PERIODS (A recession/contraction is a period between a peak and a trough — see graph below.) Officially, the last recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.

Start (Peak) End (Trough) Duration (# months) 1948 Nov 1949 Oct 11 1953 July 1954 May 10 1957 Aug 1958 Apr 8 1960 Apr 1961 Feb 10 1969 Dec 1970 Nov 11 1973 Nov 1975 Mar 16 1981 July 1982 Nov 16 1990 July 1991 Mar 8 2001 Mar 2001 Nov 8 2007 Dec 2009 June 18

RECOVERY/POST-RECESSION PERIODS (An expansion is a period between a trough and a peak — see graph below.) Obama’s economic recovery is the worst multi-year recovery when compared with double-digit growth in other post-recession periods. During Obama’s economic recovery (from the second quarter of 2009 until the fourth quarter of 2012), the economy grew only 7.5 percent, increasing from $12.7 trillion to $13.6 trillion.

Start (Trough) GDP ($ Billions) 1949-10-01 $1,838.7 1954-04-01 $2,306.4 1958-04-01 $2,534.5 1961-01-01 $2,816.9 1970-10-01 $4,253.0 1975-01-01 $4,791.2 1982-10-01 $5,866.0 1991-01-01 $7,943.4 2001-10-01 $11,370.0 2009-04-01 $12,701.0 End (Peak) GDP ($ Billions) 1953-07-01 $2,351.8 1957-07-01 $2,616.6 1960-04-01 $2,832.0 1969-10-01 $4,259.6 1973-10-01 $4,948.8 1979-10-01 $5,884.5 1990-07-01 $8,052.6 2001-01-01 $11,287.8 2007-10-01 $13,326.0 2012-10-01 $13,647.6 % Economic Growth Duration (# months) 27.9% 45 13.4% 40 11.7% 24 51.2% 106 16.4% 36 22.8% 58 37.3% 92 42.1% 120 17.2% 62 7.5% 42

NOTE The early 1980s post-recession period lasted just 12 months (from July 1980 to July 1981.) SOURCES ●Obama’s economic recovery the worst multi-year recovery since WWII ●Real Gross Domestic Product (1949 – 2012) National Bureau of Economic Research ●http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html Bureau of Economic Analysis ●http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=9&step=1#reqid=9&step=1&isuri=1

Viral Vid: In front of Obama, Dr. Carson Slams Obamacare, US Debt, Political Correctness…

In front of the Obamas, renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson gave a great speech at Thursday’s Annual National Prayer Breakfast where he railed against Obamacare, political correctness, poor education, death panels, moral decay, taxes, America’s current fiscal policy, etc. Carson offered solutions as well. As alternative to Obamacare, Carson proposed a program where newborn babies are given health savings account. Dr. Benjamin Carson’s Amazing Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast (2/7/2013)

Other video source: Here, and here.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DR. CARSON’S SPEECH Dr. Carson spoke about the U.S. debt: One of our big problems right now … our deficit is our a big problem … Our national debt, 16 and a half trillion dollars — you think that’s not a lot of money? Count one number per second, … you know how long it would take to count to one trillion — 507,000 years! Dr. Carson talked about a simpler taxation system: What we need to do is come up with something that’s simple. And when I pick up my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the universe — God — and he’s given us a system. It’s called a tithe. We don’t necessarily have to do 10% but it’s the principle. He didn’t say if your crops fail, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You make $10 billion, you put in a billion. You make $10 you put in one. Of course, you’ve got to get rid of the loopholes. Some people say, ‘Well that’s not fair because it doesn’t hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who made 10.’ Where does it say you’ve got to hurt the guy? He just put a billion dollars in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him. It’s that kind of thinking that has resulted in 602 banks in the Cayman Islands. That money needs to be back here building our infrastructure and creating jobs. Dr. Carson proposed an alternative to ObamaCare: Here’s my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed — pretax — from the time you’re born ’til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you’re 85 years old and you got six diseases, you’re not trying to spend up everything. You’re happy to pass it on and there’s nobody talking about death panels. Number one. And also, for the people who were indigent who don’t have any money we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let’s put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care.

Dr. Carson Tells Hannity Why He Spoke Out Against Obama’s Policies To Obama’s Face (2/8/2013)

Other video source: Here.

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