Author: Tickler

October 23, 2008

NY Times Finally Reports on ACORN’s Wicked Ways

I was surprised the New York Times attempting to return to journalism* from 30 years of schilling for the DNC and any other hippie effort it’s staff stubbornly continues to defend, though we’d have thought they’d have grown out of them by now as so many others have. Granted, one article doth not a reformation make, but even a single article with some balance is something for them.

Ms. Kingsley’s concerns about the way Acorn affiliates work together could fuel the controversy over Acorn’s voter registration efforts, which are largely underwritten by an affiliated charity, Project Vote. Project Vote hires Acorn to do voter registration work on its behalf, and the two groups say they have registered 1.3 million voters this year.

As a federally tax-exempt charity, Project Vote is subject to prohibitions on partisan political activity. But Acorn, which is a nonprofit membership corporation under Louisiana law, though subject to federal taxation, is not bound by the same restrictions.

“Project Vote and Acorn have a written agreement that specifies that all work is nonpartisan,” Michael Slater, Project Vote’s new executive director, wrote in answer to e-mailed questions about the relationship.

But Ms. Kingsley found that the tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote’s money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner. Until the embezzlement scandal broke last summer, Project Vote’s board was made up entirely of Acorn staff members and Acorn members.

Ms. Kingsley’s report raised concerns not only about a lack of documentation to demonstrate that no charitable money was used for political activities but also about which organization controlled strategic decisions…

“As a result, we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,” Ms. Kingsley said, referring to the section of the tax code concerning rules for charities.

and…

Project Vote, for example, had only one independent director since it received a federal tax exemption in 1994, and he was on the board for less than two years, its tax forms show. Since then, the board has consisted of Acorn staff members and two Acorn members who pay monthly dues.

But George Hampton, who was listed as a board member from 1994 to 2006, said that while he had been a member of Acorn, he had never heard of Project Vote. “I don’t know anything about this,” Mr. Hampton said.

Cleo Mata, listed as a board member on tax forms from 1997 to 2006, also said she was not aware she was on the Project Vote board. “If that’s what you say,” Ms. Mata told a visitor to her home in Pasadena, Tex. “I tell you that I didn’t realize I was.”

Mr. Slater said he “cannot speak to why Mr. Hampton and Ms. Mata fail to recall their involvement on the Project Vote board.” He noted that Ms. Mata, 63, was “in poor health.”

READ IT HERE

Let me summarize…

Project Vote has been on record of affiliating with ACORN since 1994 (i.e. sharing money/resources)
+
Project Vote’s board has been essentially 100% ACORN members/employees since 1994
+
Project Vote (ACORN-governed) hires ACORN (themselves) to do specifically Democrat voter registration since 1994.
=
This means that Project Vote IS ACORN for all intents and purposes. Project Vote, a federally funded tax-exempt charity is a shell company for Democrat/liberal voter activist group ACORN. The financial transaction alone can only be described as money laundering and federal voter fraud.

RESULT? That’s 1.3 million very likely 100% Democrat-only voters registered THIS YEAR ALONE by Democrat group ACORN (under the name of Project Vote). Sure they still have to vote to steal it, but the effort that went into visiting registering and hyping-up voters on only one side, on federal money, is corrupt.

So where does that leave us? Project Vote/ACORN has been using my money, and your money, to recruit 1.3 million potential voters who want to be the recipients of Obama’s spreading of the wealth.

From where I sit, there’s two options…

Option 1 (send a message, what they deserve): All 1.3 million registrations thrown-out due to fraudulent and partisan collection methods with federal funding.

Option 2 (send less of a message, letting them off easy): We need to first discard a little more than half of all ACORN registrations to compensate for the conservatives they failed to represent or suppressed (the pot/kettle thing) in their federally funded canvassing. Second, the remaining votes that came from ACORN registrations should be triple-checked individually against the strictest identification measures, by Republicans. These groups need to be sent a clear message that we don’t do this kind of corrupt thing in our country. We don’t tolerate stuffing ballot boxes on federal funding like the Southeast Asians and the Africans. We don’t tolerate putting puppets in place like the Russians. We elect fairly and legally according to the word of the people, not just angry partisan Democrats with their hands out. We don’t do those things in this country, that is except when Democrats are in power.

Anything shy of option 2 and Obama’s secret foot-soldiers may steal this election, much like the claims in 2000, only it’ll be true this time.

*As a post-script: I shouldn’t even give them credit. This is evidence of fraud that the New York Times have been forced to reveal for competitive reasons, to keep up with the report that was released. Unlike gaffe’s and questionable statements, even questionable policy by the Obama camp. The NY Times can’t really ignore crimes if it wants to call itself a newspaper (even the newspaper of soiled record). So we can all safely assume that this was simply a bottom line decision by management; that in the age of dwindling newspaper sales the fact remains, that the truth sells more papers even in Manhattan.

October 22, 2008

Obama and the Tax Tipping Point

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Another great WSJ op-ed piece…

Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and slashed taxes to restore growth and jobs in Great Britain. In Germany a few years ago, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder defied his party’s dogma and loosened labor’s grip on the economy to end stagnation. And more recently in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was swept to power on a platform of restoring flexibility to the economy.

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

READ IT HERE

October 21, 2008

Obama Constitutionally Ineligible To Be President?

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I found this very interesting. Why would he hide or delay this? I have my birth certificate right here.

Either side you fall on this one, there’s no justification for Obama to not release information and documents that could resolve this instantly. It looks like he’s trying to sneak into the presidency and then sort it out with presidential powers. But this could certainly blow up in his face in a big way if he waits until then.

October 21, 2008

Biden Makes McCain’s Case against Obama

Tickler 1 Comment

Joe Biden, always reliable for betraying his shallow pool of savvy and power motives through a loose tongue, told his real feelings again, painting a second coat on his ticket-mate for being weak with world and terror leaders. As if it weren’t enough for him to claim Obama needs a second desk in the oval office where Biden will preside as co-president, now he puts another nail it Obama along the very same lines.

Biden’s quote froma speech last week…

“Within the first six months of this administration, if we win… we’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy [who by the way largely failed]. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.”

Not so much on the steel spine thing Joe.

But he was right on the fact that the rest of the world sees Obama as a media darling and a great motivational speaker (corporate training sessions and kid’s parties can be booked through the campaign), not as a strong leader or leaving certainly alone a strong defender. They know as well as we do that he’s naive and weak, despite his fightin’ words regarding Pakistan. Keep in mind, this is a pacifist at heart, as are all of the left of the left, and he’s saying what you want to hear to sucker your vote. He has no intention of doing anything but talking to our enemies, which has worked so well in the past, ask Carter.

The always candid and often wise John Bolton was on Fox, expanding on the issues that face us if Zero becomes president with this opening salvo “I think [Obama’s] very naive, I don’t think he understands how to represent or defend American interests. And I think we’re going to learn… to great pain if he’s elected how much at risk we really are.”

BOLTON: Well, I think [Obama and Biden are] obviously eager to win, and that’s why Obama has changed his position so many times on key questions like how exactly is he going to get out of Iraq.

I must say my favorite Joe Biden line in that whole speech was when he said, I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than my colleague — most of my colleagues know, so he better win the vice presidency. I don’t think he can go back to the Senate after that.

HANNITY: Yes. Do you think, for example, that when you — when he said these things about Iran being a tiny country, not a serious threat, how do you think that is perceived?

I mean is that almost like when he talks about waiving — he would have left Iraq, we would have basically waved the white flag of surrender.

Is he an appeaser? Is that a fair word? I used that adjective about him?

BOLTON: Well, I think he’s a kind of a kumbaya guy. He can’t understand why somebody on the other side of the table may not be as reasonable as he is, and those people are prepared to take advantage of him.

Read it here

And here on MSNBC for Obama (the stealth campaign arm)…

October 21, 2008

Obama Plans To Sock It To Small Business

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More clear evidence of his advisors’ lack of understanding from another Wall Street Journal article…

Mr. Obama’s tax increase would hit the bottom line of small businesses in three direct ways. First, because 85% of small business owners are taxed at the personal income tax rate, any moderately successful business with an income above as little as $165,000 a year could face a higher tax liability. That’s the income level at which the 33% income tax bracket now phases in for individuals, and Mr. Obama would raise that tax rate for those businesses to 36%…

Second, the Obama plan phases out tax deductions (the so-called PEP and Pease provisions), thus raising tax rates imposed on this group by another 1.5 percentage points. Finally, Mr. Obama would require many small business owners to pay as much as a four-percentage-point payroll tax surcharge on net income above $250,000. All of this would bring the federal marginal small business tax rate up to nearly 45%, while big business would continue to pay the 35% corporate tax rate…

Mr. Obama responds that more than nine of 10 small businesses would not pay these higher taxes. Last Thursday he scoffed in response to the debate over Joe the Plumber, saying that not too many plumbers “make more than $250,000 a year.” He’s right that most of the 35 million small businesses in America have a net income of less than $250,000, hire only a few workers, and stay in business for less than four years…

However, the point is that it is the most successful small- and medium-sized businesses that create most of the new jobs in our dynamic society. And they are precisely the businesses that will be slammed by Mr. Obama’s tax increase. Joe the Plumber would get hit if he expanded his business and hired 10 to 15 other plumbers. An analysis by the Senate Finance Committee found that of the filers in the highest two tax brackets, three out of four are small business owners. A typical firm with a net income of $500,000 would see its tax burden rise to $166,000 a year under the Obama plan from $146,000 today.

READ IT HERE

October 21, 2008

Obama’s Tax Cuts Nonsense, Experts Say

Tickler 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal posted a piece by the sage staff on the implications of the Oblivious Obama tax cuts.

Now we know: 95% of Americans will get a “tax cut” under Barack Obama after all. Those on the receiving end of a check will include the estimated 44% of Americans who will owe no federal income taxes under his plan.

In most parts of America, getting money back on taxes you haven’t paid sounds a lot like welfare. Ah, say the Obama people, you forget: Even those who pay no income taxes pay payroll taxes for Social Security. Under the Obama plan, they say, these Americans would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.

Just two little questions: If people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then we’re not really talking about income tax relief, are we? And if what we’re really talking about is payroll tax relief, doesn’t that mean billions of dollars in lost revenue for a Social Security trust fund that is already badly underfinanced?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE TO SEE THE ANSWERS…

“It’s interesting that Mr. Obama calls his plan ‘Making Work Pay,'” says Mr. Biggs, “because the incentives are just the opposite. By expanding benefits for people whose benefits exceed their taxes, you’re increasing their disincentive for work. And you’re doing the same at the top of the income scale, where you are raising their taxes so you can distribute the revenue to others.”

Even more interesting is what Mr. Obama’s “tax cuts” do to Social Security financing. As Mr. Biggs notes, had Mr. Obama proposed to pay for payroll tax relief out of, well, payroll taxes, his plan would never have a chance in Congress. Most members would look at a plan that defunded a trust fund that seniors are counting on for their retirement as political suicide.

And that leads us to the heart of this problem. If the government is going to give tax cuts to 44% of American based on their Social Security taxes — without actually refunding to them the money they are paying into Social Security — Mr. Obama will have to get the funds elsewhere. And this is where “general revenues” turns out to be a more agreeable way of saying “Other People’s Money.”

Yep. It’s just that easy to fool a majority of the American people. Repeat a slogan (95%) long enough and trust they won’t look into it, and the press won’t cover it. Obama’s play them like a fiddle.

October 20, 2008

FT: Most Americans Do Better with McCain Tax Plan

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The Financial Times posted a piece comparing the McCain and Obama tax plans in a clearer and more concise way, called “McCain is no salesman on tax proposals”. Here are some highlights…

So much has gone wrong for John McCain that it is surprising he is not further behind in the polls. He has been a victim of circumstances and his own bad judgment. Some of his errors, however, are more perplexing than others. How is it, for example, that Mr McCain has been so thoroughly outmanoeuvred on tax policy?

Both candidates have offered complex tax proposals. Proliferating alternative baselines (with or without the extension of the Bush tax cuts, with or without a “patch” for the alternative minimum tax, and so forth) deepen the confusion. Unable to fathom the details, voters are left to weigh the competing slogans. Mr Obama promises to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Mr McCain says the rich need a tax cut, too. Guess who wins that argument.

Here is a fact you might not have noticed. It certainly seems to have slipped by most Americans. The typical US household would get a bigger tax cut under Mr McCain’s proposals than under Mr Obama’s. I know a few politicians who could do something with that…

Mr McCain wants to abolish the tax-break for employer-provided healthcare and replace it with a refundable $5,000 credit. Mr Obama says that a family health plan might cost $12,000 a year – leaving families who buy their own policy $7,000 worse off. This is incorrect. So far as I know, Mr McCain has never taken the trouble to explain why.

Suppose a family currently has a $12,000 policy provided by an employer. Under the McCain proposal, instead of attracting relief as at present, this benefit would be taxed as ordinary employment income – but the extra tax paid would be more than offset by the new $5,000 credit. In the first analysis, nothing changes so far as employers are concerned: all the action is on the employee’s pay cheque. The policy delivers a net tax cut to middle-income households and is enough to make the McCain tax plan on average a better overall deal for them than the Obama plan…

As well as failing to drive this home, Mr McCain has only weakly resisted his opponent’s notion that “wealthy companies” can afford to pay more. Business taxes, in the end, are paid by people – in lower wages, higher prices and lower dividends in their 401k plans. The point is not just that US corporate taxes are high by international standards and that this discourages investment and employment but that the burden eventually falls on ordinary Americans. Perhaps Mr McCain’s recent emphasis on corporate greed makes it difficult for him to point this out.

When Mr McCain misrepresents Mr Obama, he cannot even do it plausibly. Mr Obama is indeed planning to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Rather than saying, “No he isn’t”, Mr McCain could have said: “Look at what his changes do to marginal tax rates, at the bottom of the income scale (as benefits are phased out), as well as at the top.” Rather than saying, “He wants to raise your taxes,” he could have said, “His spending plans will force him to raise your taxes.”

Critical reading…READ IT HERE

October 20, 2008

Obama’s Illegal Donations

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Newsmax has a piece on Obama’s mysterious donors and lots of shady dealing…

By Obama’s own admission, more than half of his contributions have come from small donors giving $200 or less. But unlike John McCain’s campaign, Obama won’t release the names of these donors.

A Newsmax canvass of disclosed Obama campaign donors shows worrisome anomalies, including outright violations of federal election laws…

And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency.

According to a Newsmax analysis of the Obama campaign data before the latest figures were released, potential foreign currency donations could range anywhere from $12.8 million to a stunning $63 million in all. With the addition of $150 million raised in September, this amount could be much more…

Ronald J. Sharpe Jr., a retired teacher from Rockledge, Fla., appears in the Obama campaign reports as having given a whopping $13,800.

The campaign reported that it returned $4,600 to him, making his net contribution of $9,200 still way over the legal limit.

But there’s one problem with the Obama data: Sharpe doesn’t remember giving that much money to the Obama campaign in the first place, nor does he recall anyone from the campaign ever contacting him to return money.

“At the end, I was making monthly payments,” he told Newsmax. The Obama campaign records do not show any such payments.

John Atkinson, an insurance agent in Burr Ridge, Ill., refused to discuss his contributions, which totaled $8,724.26, before numerous refunds.

Atkinson and others gave in odd amounts: $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, $282.20, $195.66, $118.15, and one rounded contribution of $2,300.

Sandra Daneshinia, a self-employed caregiver from Los Angeles, made 36 separate contributions, totaling $7,051.12, according to FEC records. Thirteen of them were eventually refunded.

In a bizarre coincidence, those 13 refunded contributions — for varying amounts such as $223.88 and $201.44 — added up exactly to $2,300, the amount an individual may give per federal election…

In all, Newsmax found an astonishing 37,265 unique donors to the Obama campaign whose contributions were not rounded up to dollar amounts. That amounts to more than 10 percent of the total number of unique donors whose names have been disclosed by the Obama campaign to the public.

Of those, 44,410 contributions came in unrounded amounts of less than $100. FEC regulations only require that campaigns disclose the names of donors who have given a total of $200 or more, so that means that all these contributors were repeat donors…

But the campaign has never produced any accounting for proceeds from its online store, which virtually shut down several weeks ago after Newsmax and news organizations revealed that Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and other foreigners had made large purchases there.

The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint against the Obama campaign for “accepting prohibited contributions from foreign nationals and excessive contributions from individuals,” which incorporated reporting from Newsmax and other news organizations.

The Obama camp claims to have 2.5 million donors in all. But until now, they have kept secret the names of the overwhelming majority of these money-givers. According to a Newsmax analysis, the Obama campaign finance records contain just 370,448 unique names.

Even accounting for common names such as Robert Taylor or Michael Brown, which can signify multiple donors, Obama’s publicly known donor base is less than 20 percent of the total number of donors the campaign claims to have attracted. But the identity of the other 2 million donors is being kept secret.

As of the end of August, those secret donors have given an incredible $222.7 million to Obama, according to the FEC — money whose origin remains unknown to anyone other than Obama’s finance team, who won’t take calls from the press.

While no exact figures are available, if the same percentage of potential foreign contributions found in the itemized contribution data is applied to the total $426.9 million the Obama camp says it has taken in from individuals, this could mean that Obama is financing his presidential campaign with anywhere from $13 million to a whopping $63 million from overseas credit cards or foreign currency purchases.

The sum of all unrounded contributions in the itemized FEC filings for the Obama campaigns comes to $6,437,066.07. That is the actual amount of money that appears to have been charged to foreign credit cards that the Obama campaign has disclosed.

If the same ratio applies to the unitemized contributions, which are again as large, then the Obama campaign may have taken as much as $13 million from foreign donors.

However, the donors who made those unrounded contributions gave a total of $31,484,584.27, meaning that as much as $63 million may have come from questionable sources.

Both presidential campaigns are required to submit detailed fundraising reports for September on Monday.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

That’s the way Democrats play elections and policy, completely without moral character. And Obama wonders why there are character attacks.

October 20, 2008

GET OUT THE VOTE!

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We conservatives need to get out the vote now more than ever. Much like the Democrats encourage each other, with the motivation and intention to skew the election results away from the stance of the population, rather than any interest they claim to have in providing fairness and true representation of the country’s views. They know this with total clarity and have combined to that end with great sinister cooperation.

We need to spread the word far and wide that in every town, in every county, in every state (even the liberal ones) we need to make our voices heard and our votes counted. It’s easy and doesn’t take much time, and even if it did freedom isn’t free and being busy is no excuse.

First, vote yourself. No matter how much you’re certain of the positive or negative outcome regardless of your vote, you need to be counted or you can’t complain about the result. Second, spread the word to your conservative family, friends, and neighbors. Press them with reason that voting is the only way to bring about change since we’re not quite yet to a point where we need a coup.

It’s common knowledge that when we conservatives vote, we win. We’re always the majority in common sense, charity, and altruistic (largely Christian) effort to truly lift the less fortunate from the chains the Democrats have forged around their necks.

We’re the majority of the country’s population for heaven’s sake!

But unfortunately, we’re far behind in activism and “community organization” and representation in the media. This is likely due to the fact that we’re busy working on the American Dream, with little time for protesting outside corporations all day with signs and slogans (where do they get the time?) Our singlular focus on getting a piece of the pie must change, until the country changes and we can all go back to focusing on our pursuit of happiness and prosperity.

We must gain a greater awareness of the state of the nation. Our inaction is causing a shift in power as the Democrats register and hype those over which they preside as masters and keepers. Our inaction leads to the persistence of the programs and policies we so often decry. Our inaction will keep the country in the depth of recession and depression. Will it be another 50 years like the Democrats and closet-Socialists gave us? It’s up to us.

Democrat policies and the communities the left organizes are the source of our financial crisis. This kind of policy, enforced by the same guilty parties, will never lead to a better outcome. They need to be removed from office and their policies discontinued.

Vote and help those around you to vote. Plan a carpool for election day, make reminder calls, take the time to persuade and befriend those you know are conservative and remind them of the urgency of the emergency in this country. We are on the verge of an all Democrat government siege. That kind of crisis is actually far more dangerous, and in more widespread and moral ways, than the current mortgage crisis. There’s no doubt about it.

Please be sure to vote and open your mouth. The liberals around you will try to suppress you, as that is the only way they will win. But stand for your values. Again, please be sure to vote and open your mouth.