My blood is absolutely boiling this morning, as I have had to calm people down and show them that they are being scared into a fear of what "Obama" is trying to do. They were in the aisles complaining that Obama wants to tax all bank transactions with a 1% tax.
There is an old e-mail making the rounds again this morning, evidently in an attempt to change people's minds about what they heard from the President last night and build mistrust after his speech and his attack on the Republicans in the House who are making it difficult to reach a debt ceiling agreement.
At first, I did a simple Google of HR4646, and found out that the bill is dead, as it was introduced during the last session of Congress.
I'm not going to reproduce the entire hateful e-mail here, but the gist of the e-mail is in reference to HR4646.
First HR4646 was introduced in the 111th Congress, so the e-mail was created during that session of Congress, and this is just an attempt to resurrect that same e-mail, counting on the fact that most people who get the thing won't even question the information in it. How do they do that, you ask? By saying that this information can be found at snopes.com.
They are right, it can be found at snopes.com. If no one goes there and actually reads the information, they will be scared by the content of the e-mail into believing that President Obama intends to invoke a 1% tax on all bank transactions.
To keep this diary short, this is a summary of the information that can be found at snopes.com. One representative, Rep Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania has introduced a bill that would replace income taxes with the 1% bank transaction charge. He has been doing this since 2004.
But the e-mail contains the following excerpts to make it sound like this is President Obama's idea:
ANOTHER NEW OBAMA TAX SLIPPED IN WHILE WE WERE ASLEEP. Checked this on snopes, it's true!
Obama's plan is to sneak it in after the November elections to keep it under the radar.
Mind you, this is from the man who promised that, if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax. Keep your eyes and ears open, you will be amazed at what you learn about this guy's under-the-table moves to increase the number of ways you are taxed.
It won't hurt to keep our eyes and ears open for this misinformation that is making the rounds again. Evidently, there is a lot of fear out there because the Republicans are losing the PR war that they started about the debt ceiling.
While it only took me a couple of minutes to find out the truth about this e-mail, I've spent about an hour talking to different people here at work who had heard this rumor and had become quite upset.
This is a very effective e-mail as long as people don't think to check it out for themselves.