Tag: politics

New York Times turns on Daschle appointment

Now this is a switch!  It seems that the cheerleader section for the Obama Administration has basically thrown one of their own under the bus. How quaint.

Via the Ol’ Gray Lady:

When President Obama nominated former Senator Tom Daschle to be his secretary of health and human services, it seemed to be a good choice. Mr. Daschle, as the co-author of a book on health care reform, knew a lot about one of the president’s signature issues. As a former Senate majority leader, he also knew a lot about guiding controversial bills through Congress, where he remains liked and respected by former colleagues.

Unfortunately, new facts have come to light — involving his failure to pay substantial taxes that were owed and his sizable income from health-related companies while he worked in the private sector — that call into question his suitability for the job. We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor.

Mr. Daschle’s tax shortfall is particularly troubling because it comes on the heels of another nominee’s failure to pay taxes due. We were not pleased when the president’s Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, admitted that he had failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in federal self-employment taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund despite having signed paperwork acknowledging the obligation.

Now we are confronted with an even larger lapse by Mr. Daschle, who failed to pay $128,000 in taxes, primarily for personal use of a car and driver provided to him by a private equity firm for which he consulted. Although the firm — headed by a major Democratic donor — had not issued a form 1099 for the value of the car service, Mr. Daschle said he became concerned last June that he might owe taxes on it and instructed his accountant to investigate. Neither was concerned enough to actually pay the taxes.

[……]

In both the Geithner and Daschle cases, the failure to pay taxes is attributed to unintentional oversights. But Mr. Daschle is one oversight case too many. The American tax system depends heavily on voluntary compliance. It would send a terrible message to the public if we ignore the failure of yet another high-level nominee to comply with the tax laws.

[…..]

Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform. Mr. Daschle could clear the atmosphere by withdrawing his name.

I could sit here and tell you, that I am shocked that the New York Times is turning on this appointment. But honestly? I am not, and I will tell you why. Honesty and integrity go a long way in Government. It would be derelict of me, however not to point out that a few other Senators are guilty of the same thing. Like Al Franken and Charlie Rangel for instance. As this article above says, our tax system, as unfair and heavy handed as it might seem to some, does rely heavily on a voluntary compliance. The question is what kind of message does it sent to the American people, if we have tax cheats in our high ranking offices in the United States Government? Not a very good one, I am afraid.

The real question is; will President Obama heed the advice of the New York Times? Something tells me that he will not, because Obama has said in the past, that he is not going to make decisions based upon what other people think. (Kind of like the guy that proceeded him….) So, it will be interesting to watch this unfold. Obama, the man whom basically the New York Times and other Liberal media outlets elected basically tells those same people to stow it and does what he wants to. Now that will make for some interesting blogging!

Update: It is being reported now, by various outlets that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name.

Others on the subject:  Commentary,  Hot Air, , Soccer Dad, Power Line,  Riehl World View

(Via Memeorandum)

Daniel Larison on Michael Steele

An interesting point of view

Money Quote:

Curious to see what Steele had to say, I watched the interview he gave on FoxNews, and I can’t say I was all that impressed. To what did he attribute the GOP’s political decline over the last two cycles? Naturally, it was spending. That was it. Spending. It’s not just that he didn’t address the GOP’s failures in foreign policy and its errors in anti-terrorism, which I would have been interested to hear, but that this was the only reason he gave, which suggests that he thinks the main solution to GOP woes is to come out against spending (unless, of course, it relates to “defense”).

Read the Rest

Al Capone from the beyond the grave

Al Capone writes a letter from beyond the grave.

One from Al
One from Al

Go read

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, third world county, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

The Democrats have a new negro to kick around

I used that title for a reason, because the Democratic Party has a new threat to their propaganda machine. A black Republican Party leader.

The Democratic Party’s Racist roots come out. Check it:

via Talking Points Memo | Straight Outta Hooverville:

It gets better. The latest from RNC Chair Michael Steele: “Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.”

This is such transparent nonsense it’s hard to know where to start; but I guess it builds on the DeMint nonsense. Has Steele ever heard of government road building? Defense spending? NASA? We don’t even need to get into the many ways that government spending on many things has spin-off effects in terms of heightened economic productivity either because of technological innovation or transportation efficiencies, or whatever. How we doing on the spending on research and initial deployment that created the Internet?

Wolf Blitzer was doing the interview. I guess he didn’t realize this is a false statement? I’m worried about Wolf. He needs some help.


Wow. I have not heard this much chutzpah out of the Democratic Party. The Spirit of George Wallace, a Democrat; lives again! I have never, ever heard this sort of tenor of criticism towards Mike Duncan, at all.  Before you know it, the Democrats will be dragging out the old Klan outfits and burning crosses on this man’s front lawn. (anyone that really knows their history, like I do; knows what I am referring to.)

You see a black Republican leader is a threat, a threat to the Liberal Black Propaganda machine, that the Republican Party is the Party of the “White Rich Man”. So much for that idea! It also nullifies the very stupid notion that the White Republican Party is out to get, or is oppressive or hostile towards the Black man.

I also noticed that the Democrats are ridiculing Mr. Steel for not having much of a resume. Well, the last time I check, that floppy-eared Marxist in the White House doesn’t have much of a resume either! So much for experience argument eh? Between the one above and this douche nozzle here, the next four years ought to be very interesting.

The Story of John Birch

Here is a very excellent video on the life of John Birch:

This video is by the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch explaining what the John Birch Society is about:

Recieved via e-mail

This popped in my in box:

Citizens Against Government Waste

Dear Newsmax Reader,

Democratic congressional leaders and the Obama Administration have hyped the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as an urgent and essential “economic stimulus” package. This bill would be more aptly titled, the Pelosi-Reid Borrow-and-Spend Act!

The Senate is planning to vote on S.1, its version of the “stimulus,” this week. We can defeat it if all of the Republican members of the Senate vote NO, as their Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives did. I urge you to send a powerful message to your U.S. Senators today that you oppose this bloated, ill-conceived plan!

The $819 billion “stimulus” package approved by the House last week and the nearly $900 billion version now under consideration in the Senate would add to a federal deficit already projected to reach a record $1.2 trillion this year. This bill is not only one of the largest spending measures ever to pass through Congress, it will cost more over two years than we’ve spent to date on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

The bill’s ability to fulfill its stated mission of stimulating the economy is also questionable at best. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has concluded that more than half of the hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending contained in the bill, such as $26 billion of the $30 billion allocated for highways and $15.5 billion of the $18.5 billion for renewable energy projects, will not take place for more than two years — long after economists predict the current recession will have ended.

What’s more, the tax cuts in the package are narrowly targeted, with the largest portion going to more rebate checks, a strategy that failed to reverse our economy’s slide last year.

Even worse, the bill contains all sorts of special-interest and congressional pet spending projects that have virtually nothing to do with economic growth. As just one example, it allocates $335 million to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Not only will this “healthcare” spending do nothing for the health of our economy, CDC has a track record of using such funds for events like a transgender beauty pageant in San Francisco and a conference, entitled “Got Love? Flirt/Date/Score,” that taught participants how “to flirt with greater finesse.”

Rather than burdening today’s and tomorrow’s taxpayers with this massive government spending spree, Congress should create more incentives and opportunities for private-sector jobs and growth by cutting government spending and enacting across-the-board tax cuts for individuals and businesses, like those that helped reverse economic slumps in the 1960s, 1980s, and earlier this decade.

If the Senate follows the House’s lead and passes this borrow-and-spend “stimulus” bill, it will waste record amounts of tax dollars, provide virtually no benefit to the economy, and only add to our nation’s soaring liabilities.

Please tell your Senators today that you want them to vote NO on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act!

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Schatz
President

P.S. If the Senate approves the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal lawmakers will have authorized more than $2 trillion in new government spending since February, 2008. While the cost of “jump-starting” the economy is sobering, the coming fiscal mushroom cloud is truly alarming. The national debt currently stands at a mind-numbing $10.6 trillion, and America is sinking into debt at the rate of $3.3 billion per day. Our children and grandchildren simply can’t afford this borrow-and-spend “stimulus” bill. Please deliver that message to your Senators today!

***
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), the nation’s largest taxpayer watchdog organization with more than one million members and supporters nationwide. CCAGW is a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that lobbies for legislation to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Contributions to CCAGW are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes. For more information about CCAGW, visit www.ccagw.org. Help CCAGW wage and win this battle to stop the Senate from passing this disastrous ”stimulus” bill and burdening future generations with crippling debt by making a contribution to support our grassroots and lobbying efforts today.

Please help us put a stop to this so-called “economic stimulus” bill by contacting your friends and neighbors and urging them to write to their Senators.

The Simulus and the Republicans

An interesting question to be asked.

Will the Republicans opt to do this, given the gravity of the recession? They are in no mind to allow the bill to go through without substantial changes. The Senate Republicans, just like the House ones, believe that the stimulus bill is something of a Trojan horse. While no one disputes that a big fiscal punch is needed, many items in the current plan (which has been hastily thrown together) will take too long to deliver; at least a third of the House’s $819 billion package will not have been spent 19 months from now, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Republicans prefer tax cuts, which have the advantage of delivering their punch almost instantly. The problem is that in tough times like these, people are likely to save rather than spend their tax gains especially if—as in this case—the cuts are strictly temporary. Extra saving does nothing to boost demand in an economy that is suffering from a shortage of it. Republicans also object to some of the protectionist “Buy American” provisions attached to some of the money, and to inanities such as a $200m plan to returf the Mall in Washington, DC, (this last has now been removed from the House bill).

A party with a majority can usually pass whatever it likes in the House, but the same is not true in the Senate. Debates in the Senate are not rigidly time-limited as they are in the House, and in order to end discussion and move to a substantive vote, a motion of “clôture”, or closure, has to pass. The snag is that 60 votes are needed to pass such a motion; and the Democrats have only 58 senators. In theory, if the Republicans hang firm—and they held absolutely firm in the House—they could prevent the stimulus bill from ever being put to a full vote.

BARACK OBAMA’S gargantuan stimulus bill moves to the Senate on Monday February 2nd, after passing through the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote in favour. That means that it is in trouble.

via How Senate Republicans will respond to the stimulus bill | Stimulus and the Senate | The Economist.

Hopefully, the Senate Republicans will strip out all of the special interest pork that is within that bill and will pass a bill that will help the economy. Instead of further the socialist agenda of the far left.  But I do not look for any huge sweeping changes. As Michelle Malkin has reported, the Republicans want to play Democrat-lite and go along with Obama’s plans. Wonderful. So much for the loyal opposition guys. 🙄

How about just letting the economy run it’s course and taking the Government’s hands off of it? Instead, they want to play communist-lite and prop up everyone. Yeah, it will work, until China cuts us off, as well as the other Nation’s that are buying our debt.

Sometimes, I really think that the psychos are running the “nuthouse” in Washington D.C. 😮

The Mining Industry feels the pinch

It is not just the auto industry that is feeling the pinch of the economy, it seems that the mining industry is feeling it as well.

BIG mining companies have suffered an astounding reversal of fortunes in the past few months. As boom has turned to gloom, commodity prices have slumped, leaving mining firms with painful decisions to make. Rio Tinto is the latest to suffer. On Monday February 2nd the Anglo-Australian mining giant was forced to confirm press speculation, acknowledging that it is in talks with Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese aluminium maker. The Chinese firm may agree to a deal to help to alleviate Rio’s debts which were taken on before the credit crunch led to a foundering world economy.

Rio’s debt pile of some $40 billion was mostly run-up through its purchase of Alcan, a Canadian aluminium firm, in 2007. Around $9 billion is due later this year, and refinancing will be a tricky proposition given the parlous state of debt markets. Another $10 billion must be repaid in 2010. Rio has started a firesale of assets: it raised $1.6 billion last week by selling iron ore and potash businesses in Brazil and Argentina to Vale, a Brazilian rival. But prices are depressed and making a sale is not always possible—Rio has still not managed to offload Alcan’s packaging business, although it is reportedly in talks with a potential buyer.

via Rio Tinto, deeply indebted, seeks investment from China  The Economist.

More fall out from a concept floated by the Democrats, that was based entirely upon risk. Thank you Bill Cinton for ruining America. 🙄