If your hot morning coffee didn’t do enough to get your blood boiling, this should help:

AUBURN, Mich. — A man who won $2 million on a Michigan lottery show has told TV5 that he still uses food stamps.

Leroy Fick of Bay County admitted he still swipes the electronic card at stores, nearly a year after winning a jackpot on “Make Me Rich!” He told TV5′s Bill Walsh that more than half the prize went to taxes.

Fick said the Department of Human Services told him he could continue to use the card, which is paid with Michigan tax dollars.

“If you’re going to … try to make me feel bad, you aren’t going to do it,” said Fick.
[...]
DHS spokeswoman Gisgie Gendreau said under federal guidelines, if a person receives a lump-sum payment, the winnings are not counted as income.

Hey, why not? The state’s coffers are overflowing.

Click the pic of the guy winning more money than many of the people who are paying for his groceries will ever see for the story at WNEM:

For some reason I have the urge to go see Atlas Shrugged today.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

This one somehow slipped through the cracks earlier in the week. Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, is tired of clueless dilettantes who couldn’t operate a lemonade stand without ending up a hundred grand in debt portraying the business community as “the problem.” Marcus was on CNBC and profusely apologized — tongue-in-cheek of course — for helping to create over 300,000 jobs:

300,000 jobs? Sure, but how many “lives touched” is that?

And this criticism from Marcus comes after President Obama used Home Depot as the backdrop for the announcement of yet another “green jobs” scheme? Tsk tsk.

Of course people like Bernie Marcus are despised. The “tenured academics” in government tend to view private sector job creation as the mere byproduct of the greed of the person or people who started any company in question. In other words, entrepreneurs don’t start companies to help people — only to get rich and then ultimately not share any of the wealth with their employees. They’re a grave threat to the de-development of America. Only those who spend somebody else’s money free from the consequence of success or failure have the purest, most humanitarian motives.

This is why the government is increasingly stepping in to ensure that nobody — save for tenured bureaucrats and academics in government — has any money or power. That way everything’s nice and fair — because they care about people, dammit!

A couple more clips from Marcus’ CNBC interview are here.

Choose your words carefully, Mr. Marcus, or Joe Biden will stop shopping at your stores — not that he ever did.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’ve been privileged to know and work with Rick Newcombe, the president of Creators Syndicate, for a decade. Creators has distributed my newspaper column since 1999. Newcombe is a visionary and a tireless entrepreneur with a dedicated staff.

And Los Angeles is driving them away.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Newcombe lambastes the city’s arbitrary and capricious tax rules. The intro:

If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It’s no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.

I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.

But we have no choice. The city’s bureaucrats rival Stalin’s apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.

Read about the whole nightmare here.

Like so many businesses in L.A. (and California, for that matter), Creators is ready to go Galt. Just another example of how the City of Angels has become the City of the Damned.

Billionaire Tom Golisano, founder of Paychex, is leaving high-taxing, entrepreneur-undermining New York for Florida. He penned a kiss-off in the NYPost today:

Politicians like to talk about incentives — for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local. After reviewing the new budget, I have identified the most compelling incentive of all: a major tax break immedi ately available to all New Yorkers. To be eligible, you need do only one thing: move out of New York state.

Last week I spent 90 minutes doing a couple of simple things — registering to vote, changing my driver’s license, filling out a domicile certificate and signing a homestead certificate — in Florida. Combined with spending 184 days a year outside New York, these simple procedures will save me over $5 million in New York taxes annually.

By moving to Florida, I can spend that $5 million on worthy causes, like better hospitals, improving education or the Clinton Global Initiative. Or maybe I’ll continue to invest it in fighting the status quo in Albany. One thing’s certain: That money won’t continue to fund Albany’s bloated bureaucracy, corrupt politicians and regular special-interest handouts.

How did the state get to this point? By spending, spending and spending some more.

Going, going, going Galt. Who’s next?

A powerful manifesto from renowned composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who fears an exodus of talent from Britain in response to high taxes:

I am 61 years old. I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.

Despite a rumour put around some years back, I have never contemplated leaving Britain for tax reasons. But in the 40-plus years I have been lucky enough to work here, I’ve seen a bit. So I must draw your attention to what is really proposed in this Budget.

Here’s the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That’s not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country.

I write this article because I fear the inevitable exodus of the talent that can dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in. It is inevitable, given that other countries are bidding for entrepreneurs. The Government must modify its proposals.

Time for a U.K. Tea Party movement!

Yes, it’s a strange spectacle. Liberty Belle says: What goes around comes around.

***

For the past two weeks, with a big hat tip to Dr. Helen Smith who diagnosed the phenomenon last fall, we’ve had a fascinating and spirited discussion here about the “Going Galt” movement that’s catching on nationwide.

There’s now even a Twitter hashtag for the phenomenon: #goinggalt.

My email box (especially after publication of my recent syndicated column on the subject) continues to fill up with letters from readers choosing in large and small ways to go Galt.

Reader Ron Ruffer of Pa. e-mails:

Dear Ms. Malkin,

Long live John Galt.

Blogger Ken Pritchett also weighs in:

If the Left is fighting us, we must be doing something correctly. My wife and I have cut back massively, and are living primarily on her small salary. My Custom A/V business is being scaled back and reworked to survive on under $800,000 in sales per year. Because of this, unfortunately, we are unable to hire the two or three people we originally required within the next twelve months. Those who have small businesses know the absurd levels of taxation we face, from federal, state, and local governments.

Blogger Ross Kaminsky shares his take:

It’s great to see discussions on the web of people “going Galt.” If enough productive members of society decide that it’s simply not worth the risk and effort to strive for the next dollar, it is not primarily they who will suffer economically. It is those who believe in redistribution, who believe that Obama would and should make “government” pay her rent (and we thought she was insane when she said that – turns out she was psychic.) Those so interested in being recipients of government redistribution of wealth, the “looters” and the “moochers” as Ayn Rand calls them in Atlas Shrugged, just let them try to redistribute income from people who simply quit working because we’re not willing to be looted and mooched from. Yes, we are living Atlas Shrugged, and we might as well not quit halfway through the story.

I’ve done this once already…I moved out of the US for nearly 2 years after Bill Clinton raised tax rates, and moved back just in time for the capital gains tax cut. Let me be clear: I gave up two years of at least $200,000 (but probably a fair bit more) per year, just so I didn’t have to pay taxes to Bill Clinton’s government. My money is where my mouth is in a way that few people can claim. And Clinton was a piker and a conservative in comparison to Obama.

So, in case I haven’t been clear enough: As long as we’re already going to have a fairly bad recession, I’m saying let it be worse and longer. Let more people be persistently unemployed, let the economy drag along the sludge-laden bottom of the progressive sewer, let businesses close down or move overseas, let tens or hundreds of thousands of capable people publicly declare how excessive taxation and regulation is causing them to work less, take less risk, and employ fewer Americans, and finally let people recognize that capitalists are not a “necessary evil” but rather that they are a necessary good.

Most people don’t learn truly important lessons unless they are taught in an expensive or painful way. A once-and-for-all repudiation of Keynsianism is a lesson that is too important not to be learned in such a way.

This sentiment is not going away.

Video from the Fullerton CA Tax Revolt:

The tax-paying rebels are not going away.

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, today an estimated 500 protesters gathered for a Tea Party at Titletown Brewing. Reader David has more at Pork Revolution:

Green Bay reader Natalie was also there. She e-mails a few more photos and a note:

Dear Michelle,

Thank you for everything you do to keep this country free!

Reader Earl sends a report from Olathe, KS, where an estimated 120 taxpayers came to raise their voices. A few pics:

And in Lafayette, LA, from reader Fred:

In Harrisburg, PA, hundreds more turned out today. And protesters underscored a theme hammered here over the past year — blasting Bush for pre-socializing the economy for Obama:

The event, organized by the Commonwealth Foundation, a politically conservative group, and two local radio talk show hosts, was called the “Harrisburg Tea Party.”

“These are people who believe in limited federal and state government, but who think government has overstepped its limited role in our lives,” said foundation President Matthew Brouillette.

Speakers and participants denounced both Republicans, such as former President George Bush and Sen. Arlen Specter, and Democrats, such as President Barack Obama and Gov. Ed Rendell.

They disliked Mr. Bush’s actions last fall to give federal money to banks that had made poisonous home loans, and criticized Mr. Obama for spending additional billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up General Motors and Chrysler, to help over-leveraged homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure and to help deficit-ridden states with his $787 billion economic stimulus program.

Glenn Reynolds has a good crowd pic from Harrisburg.

Reader Bonnie sends her Harrisburg pics:

Party on!

***

Reminder:

For new readers who are just learning about the protest movement and want to join, the best organizational resources are Tax Day Tea Party (nationwide April 15 events), Twitter #teaparty, PJTV’s list of upcoming protests, Re-TeaParty (send teabags to Washington and find July 4 events), and TCOT Report. And one more good one: New American Tea Party.

***

Update 6:23pm Eastern. There’s a big tax revolt protest just underway in Fullerton CA, spearheaded by KFI’s John & Ken. Liveblogging here.

Some of the signs in the crowd:

“Governor Schwarzenegger is a girly man!”
“Recall the Taxinator!”
“No on Poop 1A!”
“Been-A-Dick Arnold”
“How do Politicians Spell Pledge? L-I-E.”
“Born Free, Taxed to Death.”
“Effeminator”

Twitter user Sugar Jones is livetweeting the protest and reports that Schwarzengger’s videotapes and DVDs were sledgehammered and shredded.

California taxpayers are mad.

A commenter below says there’s a huge traffic jam in Fullerton caused by protesters trying to get to the venue. Packed.

“Going Galt” is going viral.

The phenomenon Dr. Helen Smith first diagnosed last fall has spread noticeably since our discussion of it at CPAC/CS2.0 last week and my column/blog posts/your comments throughout the past week.

The NYTimes (disparagingly, of course) picked up on it today. The Liberty Papers has a comprehensive round-up of recent blog coverage from all sides. And here’s an interview with Dr. Helen. Excerpt:

Smith was a little ahead of the curve of what has become an incredibly popular meme. Across the broad conservative movement, from members of Congress to activists to economists, Rand’s final, allegorical novel is being looked at with fresh eyes. According to the Atlas Society, a think tank that promotes and analyzes Rand’s work, sales of “Atlas Shrugged” have tripled since the presidential election. One congressman says that Rand wrote a “rulebook” that can guide conservatives through the age of Obama; another calls Obama’s policies something right out of the mind of Rand. One economist says that Rand’s fantasies have become reality. Smith is one of many activists citing Rand to explain their decisions to sell their stocks, or to explain why the president’s “demonization” of run-amok CEOs is aggravating the economic slowdown. The popular meme is giving critics of the president’s policies a way to explain why, they believe, it’s doomed to fail — because Rand predicted all of this…

…he activists who have latched onto “Atlas Shrugged” don’t spend as much time thinking about the heroic-capitalist side of the analogy. For Dr. Smith’s readers, like their counterparts writing in to libertarian blogs and protesting Obama at “tea parties, ” the novel is most useful for the concept of “going Galt.” “I do some consulting on the side and the taxation on that income is unbelievable,”wrote one reader to Michelle Malkin. “So, to heck with this. I’m ‘going Galt’ on my consulting.” “I’m considering moving to a small family farm in a foreign country,” wrote a reader to Smith, “and looking into the practical side of the issue right now. It will take a year or two of preparation, but might be feasible and even comfortable.”

Smith, who’s still mulling over ways that she can “go Galt,” sees a possibility for a moral stand. During the Iraq War, she read about a painter who’d painted less, reducing his income, in order to dodge taxes and thereby make sure he didn’t fund the war. “I’d go John Galt just to not pay for programs I don’t believe in,” said Smith. “If we’re opposed to socialistic concepts — if we know they don’t work — why should we pay to support them?”

***

Well, well, well: Whoopi doesn’t like getting taxed out the wazoo. She went on a little rant today, complaining: “I don’t wanna get it comin’ and going’…BACK OFF ME! (fast-forward to 3:30):

(hat tip – reader Glenn)

Reap what you have sown, sister.

Scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends this morning for the regular 8:15am Eastern gig. They want to talk about the “Going Galt” phenomenon and our Wreckovery.gov photoshop contest.

*Update: See also my discussion with Instapundit Glenn Reynolds on PJTV here.*

Four more “Going Galt” items for you:

*GOP Rep. John Campbell comments to the Washington Independent:

“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”

Reader Pete e-mails:

May I please offer an example of why I am about to “Go Galt?”

My wife and I are both teachers, so we are not nearly in the upper income brackets. However, I do some consulting on the side and the taxation on that income is unbelievable:

- 25% federal income tax
- 9.3% state income tax
- 7.65% self-employed Social Security and Medicare tax
- 7.65% “employee” Social Security and Medicare tax

So I am paying a nearly 50% tax on the income from my little consulting business. 50%! So, to heck with this. I’m “going Galt” on my consulting.

(A side note: Most of my consulting has to do with training teachers to teach Advanced Placement classes. I don’t mean to sound self-absorbed, but I have a pretty strong reputation, and teachers report back that the training they have taken with me has helped their students to be far more successful on the challenging AP exams. But at this point, Michelle, I don’t care. I’m fed up. Let somebody else in my modest income bracket pay the federal government 50% of his/her earnings.)

And many interesting comments in Megan McCardle’s thread on the subject, including these:

Three examples I personally know of:
1. I recently talked to a record shop owner, who had two shops, four employees, open seven days a week. He let go all four employees, closed one shop, is only open five days a week, and reduced hours at that. Result? Almost the same take-home, and greatly reduced blood pressure.
2. The owner of a small custom stained-glass shop, where I am currently taking a class, let one employee go because the additional income she brought in was not worth the added hassle.
3. I retired from a pretty good job at the end of last year, at the age of 61. I could easily have kept working, or found another job. With pension, and social security in a few months, my gross will be considerably less. But, after taxes are taken into account, the net is not all that much less. I figured that I was working in a pretty high-stress job, for little incremental income.
By the way, I have talked to other folks in similar positions, who have run the numbers in the same way I did. Most of them realize they are knocking themselves out for a few bucks an hour, but keep going out of inertia, or a sense of duty. But if things get even worse, as I suspect they will, expect more upper-middle-income to upper-income folks to quietly drop out.
I would be interested to hear if other readers know of similar cases.
Posted by Uncle Bill | March 4, 2009 9:29 PM

***

I’m going to add a few more anecdotes, in the hope that of pushing the total over that needed to become data.
Quite a few people in my line of work are taking the slow season off, and I know a few older entrepreneurs who have drastically downsized their business.
Higher taxes are probably not going to stop status-hungry single blue-state urbanites from working like slaves to make partner. That’s why there’s such support for high taxes in that demographic – they’re interested in status, not money. Money doesn’t really matter that much when no matter how much you make you’ve still got roommates.
It’s unlikely people are going to go Suvivorman on us, which saddens me, because I love the show.
However, higher taxes are going to hit at the margin – mostly older entrepreneurs winding down their life’s businesses a few years earlier, late-middle-aged people retiring early, small businessmen substituting highly-regulated labor with slightly lower-returning capital (possibly by outsourcing)
I know I certainly have made plans to travel more and work less.
Posted by secret asian man | March 4, 2009 9:49 PM

***

While it’s certainly unlikely that any huge percentage of America’s most productive people will “go Galt” — even partially — you already have a fair amount of anecdotal information right here to suggest this will matter at the margin.
If I were a wealthy 55-year-old in Manhattan, I might seriously think about early retirement rather than paying 60 percent of my income in federal, state and city taxes.
Also, and probably more importantly, if I were a brilliant scientist or engineer from the third world, rising tax rates would certainly alter my calculations about which rich nation to grace with my productivity — especially considering the added bonus of the anti-H1B movement in Congress.
Add all that up and guess what, the economy will probably grow a bit slower over the next few years than it otherwise would have. Atlas Shrugged in a minor key.
Posted by Scoop | March 4, 2009 10:54 PM

And from Stephen Spruiell’s readers:

I am a CPA who spent the the better part of the last 7 years working in public accounting. It is not only the increase in the rate that scares those who are making the $250K plus, but the FICA taxes Obama wants to throw on it too. So really it would be a jump not to 39%, but more like 53% when you factor that in. Most of my savvier colleagues in public practice, as soon as it became apparent that Obama was going to get elected, immediately started advising clients to accelerate as much income into 2008 as possible and push as much expenses into 2009. Pay any large dvidends or distributions out of your company in 2008 before either the dividend tax rate goes up or those distributions from your S-corporation are subject to FICA. On top of that, some of the earners will probably ease up, figuring it isn’t worth giving up 60% of your income (when your factor state taxes) to the government. Some who own small businesses will just not hire or invest in new equipment.

***

… while it may be true that under Obama the marginal effect is only 2, 4, or 6% (depending on what actually passes from his budget), I think the greater effect is the psychological line that Obama has so clearly drawn in the sand. If the tax rates are adjusted so that someone making 250,000 is taxed at 39.6%, if this person is self-employed, they are looking at a total tax rate of up to 61.4% on each dollar over $250,000. [61.4% = Federal Income Tax (39.6), State Rate (up to 10.3% in California), and self-employment tax rate (roughly 11.5% when you take into account your deduction for ½ of the self-employment tax)].

I am a tax accountant, don’t consider myself to be an idiot, and I am right in Obama’s income target range. I will be joining those looking to limit hours worked so as not to enter that 60% territory. Part of the motivation will be the self satisfaction of not contributing to the socialist cause.

My syndicated column today spotlights two related phenomenon: the Tea Party revolt on the streets and the “Going Galt” revolt with our wallets. For new readers who are just learning about the protest movement and want to join, the best organizational resources are Tax Day Tea Party (nationwide April 15 events), Twitter #teaparty, PJTV’s list of upcoming protests,
Re-TeaParty (send teabags to Washington and find July 4 events), and TCOT Report. And one more good one: New American Tea Party.

Some tinfoil-hatted kooks are still pimping their conspiracy theories about the movement. The latest: Aha! Malkin once gave a speech to Americans for Prosperity and AFP organized the Denver anti-pork protest two weeks ago before Santelli went on his Tea Party rant last week, ergo it’s all a vast plot!!!!!!

Protesters should take this nonsense as a sign of success. You haven’t really made it until you’ve aroused the paranoia of the unhinged Left.

***

“Going Galt:” America’s wealth producers vs. wealth redistributors
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Enough. In a word, that is the message of disgusted taxpayers fed up with the confiscatory policies of both parties in Washington. George Bush pre-socialized the economy with billion-dollar bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Barack Obama is pouring billions more down those sinkholes. The camel’s back isn’t just broken. His neck and four legs have all snapped, too.

Enough. Last Friday, thousands of Americans turned out to protest reckless government spending in the pork-laden stimulus package, the earmark-clogged budget bill, the massive mortgage entitlement program, and taxpayer-funded corporate rescues. Contrary to false left-wing blog smears that the hastily-planned impromptu events were “Astro-turfed,” the crowds were packed with first-time grass-roots activists. They were people with families and day jobs whose usual definition of “community organizing” involves neighborhood yard sales or their kids’ soccer matches. They were members of the silent majority who decided to be silent no more.

Enough. These “Tea Party” protests spanned the sunny Santa Monica pier to the icy streets of Chicago and Cleveland to rain-drenched Atlanta, overflowing grounds of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, massive crowds in Greenville, S.C., several hundred each in New York City and Washington, D.C., and all points in between. Like those who demonstrated before them in Seattle, Denver, Mesa, Arizona, and Overland Park, Kansas two weeks ago, the Tea Party participants held homemade signs that said it all: “Your mortgage is not my problem;” “Liberty: All the stimulus we need; “No taxation without deliberation.”

The speed and scope with which they mobilized were due not to nefarious outside conspiracists, but to social networking websites Facebook and Twitter (where a burgeoning network called Top Conservatives on Twitter became the central clearinghouse for information). Planning for a new wave of demonstrations on April 15 has begun at www.taxdayteaparty.com.

Enough. While they take to the streets politically, untold numbers of America’s wealth producers are going on strike financially. Dr. Helen Smith, a Knoxville forensic pathologist and political blogger, dubbed the phenomenon “Going Galt” last fall. It’s a reference to the famed Ayn Rand novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” in which protagonist John Galt leads the entrepreneur class to cease productive activities in order to starve the government of revenue. (Not coincidentally, Rand’s novel sales are up and John Galt references punctuated many of the Tea Party demonstrations.) Dr. Smith was inundated with stories like these:

“I have frozen hiring in my firm…No investments will be made in taxable accounts (only 401k/IRAs). I am buying silver and gold instead of CD’s or stocks with non-qualified money/savings. I have stopped taking new clients (thus freezing my income). I barter more and more. Spend less. I stopped Leveraging assets (don’t borrow).”

“I have cut WAY back–I’m no longer buying retail, driving out of a 10-mile radius, spending money on eating out, and am no longer putting my money in a savings account. I am using the money to pay off all of our debt. It has made our family closer, more appreciative…”

Another blogger at Pursuing Holiness wrote: “Last year my family paid nearly a thousand dollars a month in federal taxes, and we are not by any stretch of the imagination rich. I’m going to make it my business to cut that amount in half, using every legal means possible and reducing my income so there is less to tax.”

Enough. Those business owners are not alone. This week, ABC News spotlighted upper-income earners going Galt in response to President Obama’s proposed tax hikes on families with incomes of $250,000 or more. A Lafayette, La. Attorney told the reporter she was cutting back on her business to avoid the tax threshhold: “Why kill yourself working if you’re going to give it all away to people who aren’t working as hard? Tax hikes have consequences. Incentives matter. Only self-deluded wealth redistributors living in la-la-land believe otherwise. Another business owner, Dr. Sharon Poczatek, explained:

“The motivation for a lot of people like me — dentists, entrepreneurs, lawyers — is that the more you work the more money you make,” said Poczatek. “But if I’m going to be working just to give it back to the government — it’s de-motivating and demoralizing.”

The perpetual Borrow-Spend-Panic-Repeat machine in Washington depends on the capitulation of the wealth producers. There’s only one monkey wrench that can stop the redistributionist thieves’ engine. It’s engraved with the word:

Enough.

(Photo credit: Free Colorado)

***

I’ve pulled together a video round-up of last week’s events. Enjoy!

Smart Girl Politics put together a nice video of the nationwide Feb. 27 Tea Party protests:

Find more videos like this on Smart Girl Politics

Here’s video of the Houston Tea Party via reader Morris:

And Dallas:

Ft. Worth:

D.C. from Reason TV:

Seattle:

Sacramento:

Sacramento Tea Party from bob humphrey on Vimeo.

New York City:

Chicago:

Atlanta.

Greenville SC: Flickr set.

St. Louis: