-
RSS Subscribe
-
The Crime of the Century (General Motors)
America, You’ve been had!!!! When GM went (according to this chart by Tom McMahon with assistance from Larry Kudlow) “bankrupt” the outstanding funded debt of the corporation was $27 Billion. If you add the portion of the UAW retirement & medical benefit program that was “underfunded” you have another $10 Billion. Added together this is a total of $37 Billion. This debt was not really of comparable nature. The $27 Billion that was owed the Bondholders was senior to the unsecured and junior UAW liability. In a bankruptcy all senior obligations must be met in full before you move down scale to more junior obligations. In short, the bondholders should have received all the company, at least all the company that was divided between the bondholders and the UAW; however, GM only got 10% of the stock of GM (in lieu of debt) for $27 Billion while the junior and unsecured UAW liability of merely $10 Billion received 40% of the stock of the company. When the bondholders were cheated the effect was to steal money from the savings and retirement accounts of Americans.
This is a crime of monumental proportions and can be explained only as a political payoff to the unions since the labor movement was the single largest contributor to the Obama and Democrats political campaign. It would have been an interesting news item if 40% of the company had gone to Haliburton. This is an advantageous distribution to the UAW over GM Bondholders by a ratio of 10.8 to 1 (which itself does not take into consideration the seniority of the bondholders). It would be nice to receive a favorable distribution as compared to other creditors by the ratio of 10.8 to 1 when legal precedent dictated that you (UAW) would receive zero. This favoritism cannot be explained as anything but cronyism and political payoff. This is the crime of the century. But, what do the Democrats like to keep telling us? ….”elections have consequences” [and those consequences can be criminal when you have a “free” press in the tank with the administration.]
Complicity??? (of course it is)
Vatican halted trial for man accused by deaf boys
VATICAN CITY — Two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — to let them conduct a church trial against a priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys, but the Vatican ordered the process halted, church and Vatican documents show.
Despite the grave allegations, Ratzinger’s deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the alleged molestation had occurred too long ago and the accused priest, Rev. Lawrence Murphy, should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese.
The New York Times broke the story Thursday, adding fuel to an already swirling scandal about the way the Vatican in general, and Benedict in particular, have handled reports of priests raping children over the years.
On Thursday, a group of clerical abuse victims provided the documentation to reporters outside the Vatican, where they staged a press conference to denounce Benedict’s handling of the case. During the conference, a policeman asked for their documents and they were subsequently detained, police said.
“The goal of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was to keep this secret,” said Peter Isely, Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests……….. MORE
Another Jobs Summit Fantasy
Another wasted day and another dollar down the drain. As unemployment increases the only response that Obama has is another “Jobs Summit.” [You may remember this past June’s Senate Democratic” Green Job Summit.”] It would have been interesting if some of the participants had actually ever created any. This group was woefully lacking of people that know how to create jobs and the organizations that make a living by figuring these things out like the US Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Business and National Association of Manufacturers weren’t even invited. Early reports indicate that not much happened short of more policy wonk talk and pontification. Here you have an Administration that has made 92% of their appointments from those that never worked in the “private sector” organizing a meeting to discuss how to create jobs. All this from a crowd that never had to “make a payroll?” This is a world class irony.
I did notice that Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) was proposing a “jobs tax credit” and I am sure that the Administration would try and take credit as a “tax cutter” if they ever implement one but they shouldn’t (implement one), let me explain.
First this particular iteration of the “jobs tax credit” was designed by the Economic Policy Institute which has a Board largely formed by Union Leaders, College Professors and a retread executive of the failed Lehman Brothers, in short a rich mixture of Democratic partisans who themselves never had to make a payroll. In their collective wisdom they were recommending a “jobs tax credit” of 15% in 2010, 10% in 2011 and falling to 0% in 2012 and beyond. In short if you hired someone presumably in 2010 you could take a tax credit of $7500 for a $50,000 job in 2010, $5000 in 2011 and of course nothing in 2012. This means it actually costs you 85% in 2010, 90% in 2011 and 100% in 2012 and beyond along with all related “overhead” cost of employment such as insurance, retirement and whatever. They “project” that this will create between 2 and 5 million jobs. This is fatutously amusing.
I have been in the position over my career of having to “make” payrolls, hire people, prepare tax returns for those taking the tax credit and yes even taking said credit myself. (thank you Uncle Sam) I can honestly say that not on a single occasion did I or anyone I worked with even consider the “jobs tax credit” in making the “hiring” decision (maybe in the budgetary process). This is not an anomaly, it is the bottom line. I am certain that these “jobs tax credits” are not on their own responsible for a SINGLE reasoned job hire.
When you read statistics each month and you read something like “employment shrank by (lets say) 495,000 jobs.” This actually means that more people were “let go” than “hired.” In every economic environment (good or bad) SOME people are hired and SOME are let go. In good times the numbers favor the hiring and in bad times the numbers favor the firing. The employers of those that are hired will take the jobs tax credit for sure and the government will take the credit for creating (as opposed to saving) jobs. The result, however, is no impact on job creation but a huge cost to the Treasury to reward companies for hiring people that they would have been hired anyway. NOBODY will hire somebody and pay 85%, 90% then 100% of salary plus “overhead” based on that nominal savings. They must FIRST have confidence that they will need them in the long run, which is discouraged with every breath out of the administrations mouth continually promising tax raises for those making over some “arbitrary” limit ($250K i.e. small business), regulations and daily increasing the burden of government mandates. If employers are convinced they will need new employees in the long run they will hire them regardless but they will pick up the boot along anyway. Anyone that hires someone based on a jobs tax credit should be summarily fired, and somebody that doesn’t recognize this is fool.
This is not some esoteric business theory but Basic Business 101. The only problem is that nobody in the Obama administration has taken that course in academia or more importantly real life. I am shocked that it isn’t intuitive to them anyway. Senator Gillibrand has now also made it abundantly clear that she is a lightweight and I will impart to her along with others the title “fool.” They are just trying to look like they care and are doing something until something else just happens. This is sort of like re-arranging the furniture on the Titanic.
Willie, Mike & Maurice
I have to admit that on a personal level I sort of like Mike Huckabee. I really didn’t follow his career in Arkansas and I really wasn’t a supporter of his during his recent primary campaign for the Republican Presidential Nomination of 2008. Since I didn’t know much about Huckabee I really didn’t know what he stood for, but he did espouse a flat one rate national sales tax that certain economists (79 including a Nobel Laureate) calculated would bring in and equivalent amount of revenue to the Federal Government at the rate of 23% with certain “exemptions” for poor people from paying any of it. At that time “non-partisan” legislation was presented to both chambers of Congress under the enumeration of HR25 & S256.
Also at that time I personally wrote his campaign a letter (unanswered) asking what “Constitutional” changes were going to be implemented “simultaneously” to insure that the Congress (with its insatiable appetite for spending to endear their candidacies to their electorate) from taking that “sales tax” (thank you) and then initiating another “normal” income based tax that would of course be touted as just for the “rich” on top of the sales tax (like the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was touted which authorized the “income based tax” without apportionment in 1913. Note: The original tax return taxed 1% on income over $3,000 to $500,000 when it then moved with a 6% “surtax” on income over a half million dollars, a lot at both ends of the bracket in 1913). I also knew that the Constitutional Amendment process was daunting and lengthy. In truth I knew there was to be no assurance from such action by the Congress so in short I never got on the Huckabee bandwagon. I knew in the long run we would end up with “both” tax systems stacked upon each other.
As a side note: Just recently as the Democrat controlled Congress is contemplating all the budget busting propositions such as Cap’N Trade, Obamacare, Nationalization of certain industries to benefit targeted constituencies, etc along with a long list of tax and mandate increases, Nancy Pelosi is now discussing in addition to all this the “stacking” of a national sales or VAT tax to boot. Hmmm…..
Back in 1988 during the Democratic Primary season as it sought to select its 1988 Presidential nominee, Al Gore, a rival of Mike Dukakis, first introduced the “lax” furlough policy in the criminal justice system of Massachusetts where Dukakis was Governor. The charge was that this policy was dangerous to the population at large. This charge didn’t seem to resonate in the Democratic Primary, but it did in the General Election when it was disclosed that Al Gore was correct in his assessment of the furlough policy because through it in its most egregious case a convicted killer named Willie Horton, who had been sentenced to life (without chance of parole), walked away from furlough and went on to immediately twice rape, beat, pistol whip, knife, bind fiance, steal car and escape. (I’ll score this one as Al Gore being correct in exposing the travesty of the Massachusetts “furlough” program.) Many attribute this situation as contributing heavily to his defeat by George H.W. Bush.
In like manner it came to light this weekend that Governor Huckabee may have a similar albatross hanging around his neck. Namely this concerns the murder of 4 police officers in Washington State in an “execution” style this past weekend “allegedly” by Maurice Clemons (the politically correct phrase for this is “person of interest”). This guy is equally as bad a character as Willie Horton and while it could be argued that when he (unlike Horton) was given clemency by Huckabee he had not “yet” been found guilty of murder, which is true, but he had been declared an “habitual criminal” by the age of 18 and had been given 60 years in prison for his crimes because of this reason. After his “Huckabee” release he was convicted for two armed robberies and incarcerated under a 10 year sentence which he was soon released from. After extensive crime thereafter including raping a child he was arrested and a Liberal Judge in Washington State required that he post a bond that even he could afford. It was during this “bail” period that he completed the 4 executions of the police officers.
The bottom line here is there would be a number of people alive today and children protected from life maring rape if Huckabee didn’t decide to give Clemons (as he said at the time of the clemency) a 2nd chance. Wow, I hate it when I hear that officials have such warm hearts to give second chances to those like Clarence that had already a life of crime and declared a “habitual criminal.” Truth in speaking should at least require that Huckabee call it a 24th or 25th chance (or whatever.)
So, like Michael Dukakis’ fate, I believe this is (or at least should be) a “deal breaker” and future considerations of Mike Huckabee as a Presidential candidate and such plans should be discarded. I believe he has some explaining to do, but to none more appropriately than to the families of the dead police officers and the parents of the raped child (even assuming we let the numerous armed robberies slide).
LATE UPDATE: To be completely fair I should mention that it has come to my attention that Huckabee did not release him from prison but “commuted” his 60 year sentence to 47 years. Aparently in Arkansas 47 years is a term that can be considered by the Parole Board not 60 years. Clemmons applied for release with the Parole Board and it was granted. After his release he committed a couple more serious crimes in Arkansas for which he was arrigned, BUT the Prosecuting Attorney failed to file certain legal papers by a deadline and the courts released him on a summarial basis. THIS IS THE REASON THAT I NEVER HAVE BELIEVED THE CLAIMS OF THOSE ON THE LEFT OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ISSUES THAT THEY WOULD SUPPORT “LIFE WITHOUT CHANCE OF PAROLE” IN CAPITAL CASES as some type of solution in opposition to Capital Punishment. I want to tell you that such a sentence in all reality does not exist (with the exception of maybe Charles Manson). So in view of this “new” information I must say that where I may find “less” direct culpability of Huckabee than believed above, I still find that he made this all possible with the type of criminal management that has caused thousands and thousands of innocent deaths in order to avoid the very rare phenomenen of “false imprisonment” or erroneous capital punishment not to mention 2nd chances or 24 or 25th chances whatever.
LATER UPDATE: 12/1/2009. Problem solved. This guy got nailed by a cop today and we will no longer have to deal with this low life. So there is usually a bright side of a very dark story.
Michael Moore’s preferred 95.6 % Income Tax Rate
I saw Michael Moore on Hannity the other night and maybe some of you did as well, but I decided to put his (Moore’s) demeaning comments to Hannity down on paper mathematically. If you watched the show you know that he was talking down his nose to Hannity all night suggesting that he didn’t care about the “poor” at all. When Hannity asked Moore to define what his tax plan would be he said the following below. Please bear with me as I transcribe his comments into real values. Also my assumptions are not assumptions at all, but based on “taxing the rich” as Moore prefers.
Since we are talking about the rich and both Hannity and Moore could be described as “rich” with each making income in the million’s I am going to make this analysis based on the Maximum tax bracket in both the Federal and State model and I am going to ignore the slight impact of the lower brackets since it is insignificant within the class of the rich. I am also going to “assume” for the purposes of this analysis that the “rich” in question here are “self employed” people since most of them are such as Moore himself, Hollywood Stars, Rock Stars, etc. These are the rates effective for 2009.
Mr. Moore said that both he and Hannity could afford to have their tax rate “doubled” and that this should happen and would be disappointed if Obama didn’t do this. Although Hannity took him to mean doubling ALL their tax rates I believe that there was a disconnect between Hannity and Moore on this point. I am going to assume the conservative approach and say that Moore was only referring to the Federal Income Tax Rate (if I am wrong and he is suggesting what Hannity thought he heard, watch out, that is a combined tax burden exceeding 100% of income). Since the maximum Federal Tax Rate (effective on income above $372,200 for Married Filing Joint) is 35% Moore’s “doubling” of the Federal Tax Rate would bring his practical “Federal” tax rate to 70%. He went on to state that it was a scandal that “high earners” paid Social Security Retirement tax only on the first $106,800 of earnings with the rest being untaxed. He thought that this was an abuse of the lower earners and a shame on the higher. (He didn’t mention that through the IRS taxation of Social Security Earnings that by far that most of the Social Security payments are made to the lower income earners.) So adding this tax to not only the first dollar but the last dollar of earnings as well brings this component of tax up to 15.3% on all income.
In addition to this we can assume (though Moore didn’t state) that the State Income Tax is still part of the “overall” tax package as it affects the tax payer. States vary in such rates, but since most of the noise on the matter is coming from California, I’ll use their tax rate as the example in this model. That “maximum” tax bracket is 10.3%.
Adding this all up you will get a combined 95.6 % (70.0 % Federal Income Tax, 15.3 % Combined Social Security & Medicare Tax, and 10.3 % State Income Tax-CA).
This 95.6% is simply those taxes based on income and do not recognize Real Estate nor Sales Tax. (Of Course in addition to “income taxes” the Democrats through the voice of Nancy Pelosi are now considering a “National Sales Tax” (VAT) on top of it all.
So, lets take a great income of $10,000,000 for these “filthy rich” celebrities, stars, Entrepreneurs, business owners, etc. So here you have a Gross Income is $10 million and after deducting the taxes that Michael Moore and his ilk have in store for you, your “take home pay” (i.e. after tax income) is $440,000 and you may say “gee that is a good income and so right you may be, but this the amount before further reduction due to sales taxes and Real Estate taxes on those expensive houses, and with that you will probably be in the S300’s take home range. If you are not so talented and only making $5 million per year you can count on a take home pay before sales and real estate taxes more in the low $200,000 range and this is before putting anything aside for Retirement or children’s education (assuming we ignore the VAT tax on top of this all being considered by the Democrats right now). I have to believe that the Jet Fuel for this class of liberal is more than $200,000 per year alone.
None of this analysis begins to approach the element of “risk” that the “rich” must confront in order to develop a business that will earn them a profit of $10 million, $5million or even less. When you take this into consideration you have a situation where nobody would take the risk to develop the jobs that the country needs. At the 10 million level of pre tax profit you might have a Gross business of $100,000,000 with a 10% pre-tax profit (which would be great) and if you were fortunate enough to obtain a rate of return on your invested capital of the lofty number of 20% this would mean that you had “at risk” capital of $50,000,000 to fund this type of operation. In short you are risking $50 million with the hopes in a good year of making maybe $300,000 take home pay. Not me……..and I doubt you would either. I’ll just keep the $50 million risk free and you can look for your jobs elswhere.
Now this is change you can not only believe in, but that you are going to get………………….
“Collective” Praise by School Children
Now back at the Florida Headquarters from Ohio then Nashville (nearly adjacent to the EIB network) J
I wanted to post a personal email I sent to a couple of friends last night that are occasional readers and commenters here at NSL, though not on the flattering side. I have taken the liberty of nominal editing and redaction of some actual personal numbers in this republished letter, but you can trust that they were just the same significant, at least to me.
I’d hope that while the left is taking a page out of the Mao Tse-Tung songbook of “collective” praise by school children for the leader (mmm, mmm, mmm) that some might read the article (below) about the “real world” and learn something about how finance actually works, but then again that is why they say about SOME teachers: ”those that can do, do …. while those that can’t do, teach.” New York is worried and perplexed about why the income tax revenues from the recent piled on tax of the “wealthy” this year is not meeting expectations even after adjustment for the recession. The truth is (and to their future and intensified dismay) because it was enacted just this year the “wealthy” have not yet been able to implement their “end game” economic plans. This year down 20% but look out for additional exodus from New York that will not only erode some of the planned increase, but take money off the table that previously existed under the prior tax structure. You might say, “well, that is a state problem,” but they can’t run away from the Federal Government. This is the naiveté of the left. These people are the primary employers in the country and just watch them move investment & production offshore because of this type of stuff and cap & trade, etc. [Just like Obama did in 2008 with the proceeds of his book sales income invested almost entirely in foreign investments.]
Though just a small player in the financial world, I am a “tax refugee” from Ohio myself. I make most of my income from stocks and the stock market. My margin cost (i.e. investment interest) can run to 50% of my gross proceeds (and has been 80% in the past). Ohio is one state that does not recognize the legitimate expenses of producing income and wants to tax the gross not the net. Even the Federal Government allows this type of expense though be it “below the line” as they say and then they also have an “unfair” “run off” of Schedule “A” deductions and of course taxing the gross through AMT outrage. Any self respecting “progressive” won’t see anything wrong with this at all and others will justify it by accusing and citing what they personally didn’t like about George Bush or some ad hominem comment like that, but the bottom line is this is costing governments “revenues” and they just can’t seem to grasp that.
One example is that I myself now file as a Florida resident (and you can be sure I am dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s religiously on the residency game). I went ahead and calculated my hypothetical OHIO taxes for 2008 (just for personal humorous entertainment since I became a refugee in 2007). Well, I laughed when the computer gave me the answer. Even though the rate is about 30% lower than CA, if I were an Ohio resident in 2008 I would have sent them a check for $XX,XXX. If they had responded favorably and reasonably to my petitions to have margin or investment interest deductible against investment income, I would have only had to pay around $XX,XXX in taxes. A couple of Republicans proposed this legislation (which I think I may have influenced) but the “progressives” shot it down. Their “progressive” ignorance not only cost them the $XX,XXX extra tax they wanted from me but the amount I would have paid if they had allowed investment interest deduction as well. In short they lost it all. You say “no big deal” but remember I am not the only one. I meet “tax refugees” down here all the time. Ted Turner is one by his own admission. (though I didn’t meet him)
If teachers or people want their children to learn something that will be of value apart from some inane mantra about the leader however creepy it may seem, they should teach them the lessons of this article (just think how delicious the response would have been if it were George Bush they were singing about 2001-08). Since people still have certain freedoms the schemes of the left are doomed to failure, but I think they know this and realize that they will have to deal with what we once thought of “as” our freedoms. [just for starters take note of the Baucus health care bill requiring the young & healthy to buy health insurance or pay $3,800 +/- “tax” under penalty of fine and imprisonment in the gulag (most likely un-constitutional now ….. pending future vacancies) in order to subsidize health care for the older and other uninsured (which now looks like will include “illegal aliens” by simply declaring them legal). Just think what a world wide health care magnet that will make us…….we’re so wonderful]
About the article below, read it, memorize it and don’t forget it…………. They already tried this with the aviation and marine industries during Clinton and it failed so badly that Teddy Kennedy led the repeal himself. But along the way it cost untold thousands of jobs and was a “net income loss” for the Treasury. The Democrats bragged about it being a luxury tax on the rich. No “rich” person paid the tax and none were denied luxury yachts or private jets or non-jet aircraft, yet they (the rich) still created a lot of jobs…….overseas. What is it they say about what the deffinition of insanity is? But what the hell, change is coming. (heard that before too) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_taxing_the_rich
Shameless “Mainstream Media” Scandal
I found with great amusement that Palm Beach Post published yesterday (Wednesday 9/16/2009) for the first time a so called “Breaking News” 
story and detailed the saga of a Florida International coed 20 year old Hanna Giles and 25 year old political activists James O’Keefe video sting on ACORN’s willing assistance in fraudulent house financing, counseling for tax evasion conspiracy, enable and counseling an illegal activity (prostitution) and facilitating the smuggling of illegal under age girls to be used in the sex trade business as prostitutes (sex trafficing) in numerous of their branch offices. This is a story that is 6 or 7 days old but the mainstream media has been conspicuously absent on the story.
At last the New York Times mentioned the story yesterday without any discussion or explanation of the merits of the story, but used their article as a battering ram against Conservatives ….. unbelievable. ACORN has now been stung in 5 separate cities and as I understand it there are quite a few more feet to fall on this matter. The initial response by ACORN was that it was “doctored” and was a vendetta and not based in reality, but today admitted (what else could they do) that this was unacceptable behavior. I have been calling for Obama to disavow this ACORN group, but like the mainstream he remained silent until AFTER his cover was provided by ACORN itself when they issuing a self-condemnation statement. A couple of days ago the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off ALL funding by the US Taxpayer to ACORN. I wonder where those coward 9 other Senators were when the vote was taken? Let’s see if
The thrust of the NY Times article was to complain that the “right” has been trying to draw a non-existent link between Obama and ACORN ever since the primaries. Since the NY Times has chosen to invoke this line of attack please allow me to set the record straight. That comment from the NY Times is a cheap attempt to disassociate Obama from ACORN and is itself a cover up such actual association. Obama’s association with Acorn is long and deep. Even in this last primary season, the Obama campaign paid ACORN $888,000 for campaign services. That’s right, Obama paid a “tax exempt organization” (for those of us in the professional tax industry that would be 501-c-3 non profit corporation) in order to assist in his campaign (under the gise of voter registration and we know how fraud laden that little operation was) especially after they came out and announced support for Obama. ANYWAY…….that is not just a single event, but he has had a long-term association with ACORN.
I am enclosing at the end of this post a copy of page one (Title Page) of the N. District of Illinois Civil Case Docket in an action by ACORN against CitiBank in 1994 with Obama serving as a Page One Lawyer in the 2nd position on the listing of Lawyers representing ACORN after he joined the recently granted “class action” status of the Buycks-Roberson v. CitiBank with his own cases against CitiBank that he filed himself. [FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000]. There are numerous other examples of continued close contact between Obama and ACORN over the years from training their employees to consulting. [It doesn’t seem his training of their employees was a very effective endeavor.] Not to mention that during the campaign Obama addressed ACORN in a speech (available on video for all to see) in which he promised that they (ACORN) would have a seat at the table (if he was elected President) in establishing policy for his administration.
For those of you new to Next Stop Lauderdale, Buycks-Roberson v. CitiBank was a landmark case against the banking industry by ACORN resulting in an “out of court” settlement that led to a chain reaction of events where the Democrats in Congress pursuaded Fannie May to re-write their loan standard downward (on the basis of “affordable housing”) and that became the first domino in the current housing crisis resulting in the subsequent current collapse of the banking industry and a national recession. For a full white paper exposing this story and the fact that Obama is probably the single most responsible politician connected to the current financial crisis and recession go HERE. (You can forget those protests of Obama himself as he asserts that he “inherited” this mess from Bush).
I would like to conclude by saying that these two brave kids Giles & O’Keefe are indeed the Woodward & Bernstein of this current generation. They are probably deserving of a Pulitzer Prize award for Investigative Reporting but don’t look forward to that since the vast majority of the 18 Board Members are from Liberal Mainstream Publications or Liberal Academic Institutions and these are the same crowd that selectively has chosen to ignore this story since it didn’t follow their own story line and bias.
__________________________________________________________________________
ACORN’s Shocking Criminal Conspiracy
One thing I found interesting this week. Once Again ACORN is caught with egregious conspiracy to commit a crime this time involving illegally obtaining home loan, Federal Tax Evasion counseling, condoning illegal activity and facilitating human trafficking of alien illegal minors for prostitution and conspiring to prepare fraudulent tax returns to obtain non-withheld credits based on declaration of children in illegal trafficking for “Earned Income Tax Credit” and after multiple indictments throughout the country on voter registration you hear nothing from the beloved mainstream press about the incident ……..and now get this. The (Democratic) officials in Baltimore (the scene of the crime) decide not to investigate ACORN but to investigate the two videographers that set up the sting and recorded the incident. Wonder if they ever investigated 60 Minutes when they did any of the hundreds of similar stings on television. It will be interesting to see if honest people of goodwill allow this stand in Baltimore or if they are all corrupt.
I am sitting back and going to wait for those that respond to this letter by asserting wrongs of the Republicans as though anything is on the same level as Human Trafficking of minors for sexual purposes. Also I am sure the defenders and those that are defenders by their silence see nothing wrong with this because how much less is this than the murder of innocent babies that doesn’t seem to bother them either. Further tax evasion (not tax avoidance) doesn’t seem to be a problem because multiple leaders of the Democratic party practice the same while talking of tax fairness out of the other side of their pocket book. The mainstream press should be ashamed and are fully complicit in this type of activity due to their continued silence in disrespect to their Constitutional responsibility and have in effect provided “safe harbor” for the evil this represents and not inadvertantly. You say it is isolated? ………..and I laugh. I do have to hand it to the Census Bureau who fired ACORN as a contractor for the Census in 2010 as a result of this. I wonder who is going to defend this no matter how circuitiously the defence is postulated.
You say this wasn’t a crime, and I’ll correct you and say it was a “criminal conspiracy” and you might say where was the conspiracy and I’ll say that the person (the ACORN Accountant) that provided most (not all) of the criminal counseling offered to prepare the tax return for a discounted price (for a “new” business) which closed the criminal loop with an offer to participate and induce the crime. This is sort of like the average run of the mill hooker/John sting where they police cannot move until there is offer to commit a crime (description of services) and a price to play.
How criminal must those be in the Administration be that hired ACORN in view of their repeated fraud and criminal indictments throughout the country over the past several voter cycles. Everyone with an ounce of honesty knows this is a politicall pay back off.
It is time for Obama to stand up and condemn this organization regardless of the personal cost it is to his fund raising machine if he has an ounce of integrity. His failure to do so will link to his personal culpability since he has worked so closely with them in the past. For goodness sakes, he has appologized for every other evil as he sees it that he didn’t personally commit since he was inagurated. …….I’m waiting.
Government Ministry of Thought
The White House is now asking publicly for ordinary citizens help it rain in what it calls disinformation about the Presidents healthcare program. They have published an email address flag@whitehouse.gov for people to write to snitch on people expressing their dissatisfaction with the program. Check out this Public Service Announcement by the White House HERE. What has come to this country is CHANGE, but I’d prefer to retain my freedoms such as speech, thank you. It is interesting that from the same people that made sure that George Bush wouldn’t tap the phones of overseas Jihadists calling their operatives in the USA we are getting and executive branch campaign to collect names of dissenters from the Presidents programs.
Anyone that has a bit of common sense can examine statements by the White House and Members of Congress as well as past video comments by Barry and realize that this is indeed designed to move us to a “single payer” Canadian style program ultimately. Their claims to the contrary about the plan is in fact the real disinformation campaign. They are even lying about the language itself that is contained in that 1,000 page monstrosity. But that is what a democracy is all about. People have preferences. If you are for the Canadian system and all that this may mean like Barry, then so be it. But they should be honest about it and not so surreptitiously conniving to force something down your throat through the strategy of dying by a thousand small lashes.
This country is founded the principle of freedom of speech and political thought and it is clear that the administration is trying to crush this. He has ordered his lieutenants to hit back twice as hard. They were smart, they charged the opponents at the Town Hall meeting preemptively with wearing swastikas and rough house and intimidation in disrupting the meetings even though this was not so according to many police reports around these events. This was a couple of days before they launched their own Brownshirt activity by loading the Town Halls with SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and ACORN affiliates to intimidate the old people attempting to enter the halls. Of course those preemptive comments about the opponents would serve to permit the Administration and Democrats in Congress to say the opponents were striking back and making it up. Too bad this time it is on tape.
Reports are that many opponents at many town meetings were told it was full while SEIU members were ushered to alternate doors for entry. This is flat out suppression of speech. This whole thing is becoming rather Orwellian in the manner that Obama is running this thing. This is much like the “Black Panther” intimidation during the election that the White House got the charges dropped on after they got into office. Let me tell you there is one hell of a storm brewing folks.
The most interesting and hypocritical thing of it all is that Barry is calling out those voices of protest as noise makers interrupting his work. These are people that are voicing their objection to his plans. Here you have the Organizer (scratch that) Agitator and Chief that spent his career organizing protest now using strong arm tactics to stomp it out. But I don’t mind in the least, because I believe he is making mistakes that will lead to death (of his Administration). I guess Rush was correct when he hoped for Obama to fail (as to his programs) even though the left media tried to distort the truth of what he actually called for.
Be sure to cancel your subscriptions to all newspapers and periodicals that are supported by the State Controlled Media and be SURE to cancel your memberships to AARP who has sold out their membership in favor of their blind acceptance of this direction. Send the message. Now go ahead and report this “fishy” blog post to the Government Ministry of Thought.
Blood for Votes (and other musings)
Obama claims that he doesn’t want to nationalize U.S. businesses, but as I see it, Obama has been in office a little over 4 months and he has turned our legal system upside down and stole the property that belongs to the “secured” and senior lenders to GM and Chrysler in order to essentially “give” those companies to the unions, his largest political financial supporters which are junior and unsecured. Nice payback payoff ……what is it they say; “elections have consequences.” This is more adept than the Russian Revolution of 1917. Remember the misery this brought Russia and others for nearly a century following that little experiment?
To the surprise of the executives in the car industry and dealers, he has dictated the closing of many car dealers nationally without a mechanism to insure that the survivors are not Political Favorites of Obama while many “successful and profitable” dealers are being closed outside of the parameters set up by the auto industry for continued existence. The only significant justification that you can deduce from this is that they are (as most in fact were) Republican supporters. He fired the head of GM and replaced him with an “Obama friendly” retired communications executive, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., who claimed on the day of the announcement that he “doesn’t know anything about cars.” Go figure.
Now he is running the banks and deciding how much their executives can earn. He has even hired a salary “czar” to establish their pay grade. He likes this idea so much that he is looking into expanding this to other industries. Steve Ballmer, CEO and co-founder with Bill Gates of Microsoft has been a supporter of Obama but stated that they will move Microsoft “offshore” if Obama continues down this punitive path of taxes and making companies non-competitive in foreign markets. While attacking US corporations that do business overseas and receive tax benefits for it and wealthy taxpayers not paying enough tax, he himself (according to his published personal taxes for 2008) almost exclusively invested those millions of book royalties U.S. Tax Exempt offshore companies and tax exempt bonds….check it out yourself.
We passed a $800 Billion pork laden program under the guise of “emergency stimulus” to save us from the “Bush economy” [see my link HERE on Obama and the “Community Reinvestment Act” that I posted this past October revealing the real cause of the financial meltdown] and used this urgency as the cover to violate his own campaign promise of posting legislation for 48 hours on the White House website so all could see its contents. He called it his “new transparency.” Instead he delivered the 1,000 page bill to the Republicans for first review at 11 PM with a final vote scheduled on it the following morning at 9 AM. Is this the transparency he promised? The only thing transparent is that we were played for fools.
The way we know that this bill has nothing to do with “emergency stimulus” (even as it was designed and written) is the fact that 2/3rds of it wouldn’t be spent until 2010 and 2011 with most of that being in 2011. But it couldn’t wait another 48 hours on the website for proper disclosure. After it was shot gunned through Congress, Obama took a vacation and didn’t even sign it till mid (the following) week. Heck, not even the rank and file Democrats had a chance to read it. But this has all turned out even worse than that because they have only spent 5% of it to date, but you probably recall that part of its sales pitch was that we had plenty of “shovel ready” projects ready to go to effect an immediate stimulus……….not so. The economy is now beginning to recover without much Federal Stimulus money and even though it will likely be a protracted recovery, maybe we should revisit this spending and cancel it and save our children and grandchildren much grief.
He further emphasized the urgent need of the “stimulus” package in order to avoid the unemployment rate from going over 9% this year. Well, that strategy worked and that ill designed “stimulus” package did pass and almost exclusively by Democrats but the unemployment rate already hit 9.4% last month. Now just yesterday he has fired the Inspector General who investigated some suspicious illegal activities of a crony of his own.
Every despot in the world is testing Obama and they are learning that they can get away with anything and they include not only Iran and Venezuela but N. Korea as well. N. Korea tested nuclear bombs and missiles in contravention of US and UN warnings and yesterday the UN passed a resolution permitting UN member countries to “interdict” N. Korean vessels suspected of caring weapons. Obama stated yesterday that he intends to challenge such vehicles on the open seas, but wouldn’t use force to board them………… Do you see what I see here? He has essentially neutralized even the weak action of the UN and stated IN ADVANCE that we wouldn’t actually stop them. What kind of leadership is this? Do you think N. Korea will be inclined to cooperate with the “spirit” of the UN action since we have notified them that we won’t enforce it?
He has been on a world wide tour apologizing for the “misdeeds” of America without mention the countries we saved, the poor people we have fed, etc. and he has even unilaterally stated to the nations of the world that the United States is NOT a Christian nation. Ok, I can live with that maybe if he let it go at that, but then he goes onto Moslem soil and states that the United States is one of the largest Moslem nations. Truth is, even by those metrics we are not. We would be far down that list. You may have noticed that he managed to exempt his own culpability from all these woes that America has brought on the world.
Obama and his party are doing everything to release real terrorist that we have captured while simultaneously strategizing to prosecute real Americans that protected us from them. Now Pelozi wants to release photos that even she agrees with U.S. Generals will cost American’s lives. People don’t understand why she would do that, but it is an easy assessment. She is playing to the political left in San Francisco that is demanding this. She has placed her reelection and position ahead of Soldiers lives. The Deomcrats once (often) said “Blood for Oil” as they criticized Republicans. I think this is much more clearly Blood for Votes. (You can’t come up with any other analysis of it.)
What is the cost of all this…………..? Essentially every economist (eliminating those with a White House connection) feel that the Obama program will bankrupt the country and leave our children with an insurmountable debt at a time they will already be going broke over the existing Social Security and Medicare problems. Obama said last week “you ain’t seen nothin yet.” With Cap & Trade and Cap & Tax he will permanently make the US non-competitive with the rest of the world so we can be seen as “politically correct” in solving a problem (global warming) that either doesn’t exist or is not caused by people. The primary Charlatan and Elmer Gantry of our era is Al Gore. He has already made $100 million propagating his junk science that he won’t debate with opposing scientists and he is on the threshold of making Billions by becoming the primary “broker” of carbon offset credits. Understand this is a Ponzi scheme that moves around the production of carbon but doesn’t reduce a single pound of emissions. Did I tell you that C02 is NOT a toxic substance and is necessary in the photosynthesis process? You breathe C02 in and out with every breath. If you didn’t you’d be dead.
Let me conclude and say I smell that Obama is on the threshold of betraying the Israelis in a fundamentally existential fashion and he is headed in the direction of being the biggest elected disaster in the history of the country………..stay tuned.