Originally posted by tbone42: Something else thats interesting is Bush, in total, took a whopping 967 days between Camp David and his Texas Ranch in his 8 years as president.
Camp David is government owned. The ranch is Bush owned. At least it saved the taxpayers money.
Heard on TV tonight (don't no how true it is) that Bohner brought in some legislation/rule that for every two weeks congresspeople work they get a week off.
Abracadabra! 'Obama's alias' vanishing quickly from Web
Analyst confirms 'Harrison J. Bounel' identity getting scrubbed from databases
WASHINGTON – "Harrison J. Bounel," an alias identified for Barack Obama by debt-collection and skip-trace expert Albert Hendershot, is currently being scrubbed from professional databases, the investigator reports.
"I believe Obama supporters are trying to eliminate any and all evidence of Obama's shady past from all public databases," Hendershot told WND. "It's the only explanation for why the alias 'Harrison J. Bounel' has dropped from sight in database searches on public records done for Obama's Social Security number and home address in Chicago."
Hendershot documented his analysis in a report written for WND that can be read in its entirety here.
Get the inside details on what could be the most serious constitutional crisis in the nation's history, in "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President," autographed by the author!
As seen in Exhibit 1, Hendershot has put together a chart that documents how he first found the Harrison J. Bounel name appearing in databases he was using to search properties in Chicago. He has worked with WND to make a series of previously unknown disclosures about the Obama home in Chicago's upscale Kenwood neighborhood at 5046 S. Greenwood Avenue.
Exhibit 1, Chart documenting discovery and disappearance of Obama alias from databases
As Exhibit 1 points out, following the discovery last March that the alias "Harrison J. Bounel" is associated with Barack Obama's Social Security number and with his Hyde Park mansion, Hendershot published his research in May on his Internet website.
Exhibit 2 documents that a Henderson database search from public records conducted March 11 resulted in two different records for Barack Obama's Social Security number: one for a "Bounel Harrison J" and the other for Barack H. Obama, identified with several variations of "Barack H. Obama" that appeared in the database.
Exhibit 2, Two records, one for "Bounel Harrison J" and one for Barack H. Obama, result from public database search conducted March 11, 2011
Exhibit 2 lists the Obama mansion address at 5046 S. Greenwood Avenue as an address for both "Bounel Harrison J" and for Barack H. Obama.
Exhibit 2 also clearly shows that the Obama alias of Harrison J. Bounel was in use as of November 2009.
As seen in Exhibit 3, Hendershot was able to duplicate the results utilizing a second public database that again showed both Harrison J. Bounel and Barack H. Obama using the same Social Security number and living at the same address.
Exhibit 3, Second database shows Harrison J. Bounel and Barack H. Obama using the same Social Security number and living at the same address
Next, as seen in Exhibit 4, Hendershot did a "relatives" search on "Bounel Harrison J" and found that Michelle Obama came up as a result, again with an address history that included the Obama mansion at 5046 S. Greenwood Avenue.
Exhibit 4, Search for “relatives” on Harrison J. Bounel produces records for Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama, March 11, 2011
A second database search, as seen in Exhibit 5, demonstrates that Michelle Obama shows up as a relative of Harrison J. Bounel, further confirming that "Bounel Harrison J." is an alias for Barack H. Obama.
Exhibit 5, Second database show Michelle Obama as a “relative of Harrison J. Bounel
Finally, as seen in Exhibit 6, a search completed Aug. 19 of the same database seen above in Exhibit 2 shows no record of the Harrison J. Bounel alias.
Exhibit 6, Database search conducted Aug. 19, 2011, suggests Harrison J. Bounel alias has been scrubbed
Hendershot, who has been studying for the past six months the Obama mansion purchase, has assisted WND in two previous published reports:
1.WND has previously reported that at least three people are listed as current owners and taxpayers on the Obama mansion: William Miceli, a Tony Rezko attorney and fundraiser who practices law at the Chicago law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, the firm that employed Obama when he did legal work for Rezko; Chicago Probate Judge Jane L. Stuart; and Obama accountant Harvey Wineberg.
2.WND reported the "buffer zone" parcel at the Obama family mansion at 5046 S. Greenwood Avenue, purchased by the wife of convicted felon Tony Rezko, was transferred to Barack and Michelle Obama without ever being assessed or taxed, in apparent violation of Illinois law.
WND has also reported that two private investigators working independently have asked why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
Hendershot is president and owner of Innovative Portfolio Recovery, Inc, a debt collection and skip tracing company based in Birmingham, Ala.
Click on link above to see the documents.
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 08-24-2011).]
BREAKING NEWS: The President has just confirmed that the DC earthquake occurred on a rare and obscure fault-line, apparently known as "Bush's Fault". The President also announced that the Secret Service and Maxine Waters continues an investigation of the quake's suspicious ties to the Tea Party. Conservatives however have proven that it was caused by the founding fathers rolling over in their graves.
Heard on TV tonight (don't no how true it is) that Bohner brought in some legislation/rule that for every two weeks congresspeople work they get a week off.
Its the truth... passed in January. "So they can spend more time at home, Congress now gets 1 week off if they work 2 in a row."
Yes, thats right ladies and gentlemen, Orange-man making sure Congress works HARD for the American people.
What a bunch of crap. I want a full week off after working 2... whats next, do the legislate everyone gets and ice cream break after every 15 minutes in the capitol building? A free dinner at Sizzler after every lunch brought from home? A new car after every trip taken on a bus or train?
WOW...he CAN learn! Seriously, can you imagine a Republican pulling a stunt like that? Obviously some in Obama's cabinet members have SOME degree of sensibility and tact.
While Republican foes and many in the business community accuse President Obama of pushing aggressive environmental agenda, the Obama EPA has actually been holding back on many of its key initiatives.
Critics say the go-slow approach at the Environmental Protection Agency is part of a 2012 re-election strategy for the president.
In July, the EPA announced that it would postpone, for the fourth time, new ozone standards, with a promise to reconsider them at a later date. Then in August, EPA regulators chose to ignore a promised toughening of carbon monoxide standards, angering many environmentalists. That followed a decision to postpone indefinitely rules that would have punished companies for emissions the agency says are linked to global warming.
By holding back on key initiatives, the White House has quieted concerns in swing states like Ohio, helping vulnerable Rust Belt congressional Democrats. The business world warns that the rules are still looming and that if Obama wins a second term, the consequences will be dire. Environmentalists, meanwhile, express their frustration with what they see as an overly politicized process.
"We think that's a really awful thing because we think that the decisions on clean air should be made on science not political science," said Frank O'Donnell of the environmental group, Clean Air Watch.
But critics of added regulation suggest that EPA's relaxation of enforcement is the exception, not the rule.
"There's absolutely no indication right now that they're pulling back on any fronts when it pertains to the EPA," said Evan Tracey of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group.
Tracey and others point to the EPA's tough new standards for increased auto mileage that begin to take effect in 2012, and still tougher regulations set for 2025 that would require cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon.
They also point to the EPA's crackdown on mountaintop coal mining, and to its new requirement for power plants to reduce pollution across state lines. That’s a rule that the industry maintains will strain power grids and increase costs for electricity.
At an August town hall meeting, in response to a farmer's question about EPA over-regulation, Obama said the EPA weighs its regulatory input very carefully.
"There is not a rule or regulation that we don't do a complete cost-benefit analysis at this point and that we don't have intensive discussions with those who would potentially be affected, "said Obama.
Critics Say Obama EPA Moves Made With 2012 in Mind
I think the fact that the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 is a couple days later and Americans will be filled with a sense of patriotism and national pride had something to do with the timing as well.
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
"If an Air Force general blows the whistle on the Obama White House, does anyone in the media hear the corruption?"
A United States Air Force general is blowing the whistle on another alleged White House scandal, but few in the news media seem to be listening.
According to General William Shelton, the commanding officer of U.S. Air Force's space command, he was told to alter his testimony before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding an Obama White House attempt to award a defense contract to the Lightsquared firm.
Lightsquared is a high-tech company doing business in Virginia that's owned by billionaire Philip Falcone, an Obama friend and campaign contributor. Advertisement
According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Phil Falcone had visited the White House and made large cash contributions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted his LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.
Republican lawmakers say that after Falcon's visit, the Obama White House allegedly tried to push through a Lightsquared's proposed wireless network regardless of the objections emanating from military commanders who believed the project could disrupt key U.S. satellite systems.
At a hearing on Thursday, lawmakers on strategic forces subcommittee, especially the Republican chairman, Michael Turner, requested that the House Oversight Committee investigate if Falcone's company garnered any type of special treatment from the White House or from Obama appointees.
The hearing came after a report by a blogger on a news and commentary web site alleged that the Obama White House pressed General Shelton to downplay his concerns about the proposed Lightsquared system.
"Under extremely unusual circumstances, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently granted a company called LightSquared the right to use wireless spectrum to build out a national 4G wireless network. LightSquared will get the spectrum for a song, while its competitors have to spend billions," according to NLPC's Ken Boehm.
President Obama's underlings deny any wrongdoing, and officials at Lightsquared denied the charges that it is receiving preferential treatment from President Obama or his staff.
Republican staff members on the subcommittee say that the decorated General Shelton told the lawmakers that Obama administration officials urged the general to describe Lightsquared's system favorably during his congressional testimony.
During the hearing, General Shelton told committee members that the wireless broadband network manufactured by Lightsquared would have a negative impact on the current Global Positioning System (GPS) relied on by both the U.S. military and private sector users of the GPS.
General Shelton told the committee members: Tests with Defense Department experts, civilian agencies and others "indicate the LightSquared terrestrial network operating in the originally proposed manner poses significant challenges for almost all GPS users."
The general insisted through his spokesperson on Friday that he had not "watered down his testimony due to alleged White House pressure."
According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama's appointees at the Defense Department.
Another occurrence being probed is that the allegation that Lightsquared at first offered to sell satellite phones on its network, however the Federal Communications Commission allegedly issued a special waiver to the firm thus allowing sell terrestrial-based wireless service to other companies.
Department of Defense officials. such as General Shelton, in the past have raised concerns about interference with GPS users, and the FCC would then promise to disallow a firm to begin operating their network until after intense testing is carried out to ensure there is no disruption to satellite navigation.
The head of the FCC declined to appear before the committee on Thursday, which the chairman, Turner, called an "affront" to the panel.
Meanwhile, Falcone and Lightsquared executives are taking the offensive by giving Obama-friendly journalists at Politico exclusive interviews.
LightSquared CEO. Sanjiv Ahuja, and its billionaire backer, Phil Falcone, denied all allegations that the wireless company used its political pull with the Obama administration to secure approval of its business plans with the Defense Department.
“It’s just very disappointing that people are not seeing the facts here, and [that] this has become a real political issue,” Falcone, a senior executive at the hedge fund firm Harbinger Capital, said during his Politico interview. “It’s not a function of being a Democrat or a Republican, it’s about trying to be an innovator. … It’s very disappointing and frustrating that we are getting stonewalled like this. … I kinda scratch my head every single day and say I can’t believe this is happening.”
Falcone and Ahuja denied receiving special treatment from the White House or the FCC in their ongoing quest to become the nation’s first wholesale wireless broadband provider, according to Politico.
But some observers see things differently. Mike Baker, a political strategist and a former military officer, believes that this investigation needs to be taken to wherever or whomever it leads. He's like to see a special prosecutor appointed.
"This is a very important national security issue, not some politically-motivated witch hunt like the Valerie Plame-CIA case. But we all know that with the news media protecting this president, the chances of anything being done are slim or none," he quipped.
"First of all, we know what motivates politicians and big business. In the middle you have a career officer who is a four-star general. Whom would you believe? What's in it for General Shelton to make up stories?" Baker asks.
"Let's hope General Shelton sticks to his guns and that more Pentagon and Justice Department officials decide enough is enough from this administration," Baker added.
Another stimulus? Remember how we had to pass the last stimulus right now, so unemployment would not climb above 8%? It has now been above 9% with the stimulus. Some of Obama’s thralls are denying that Obama made such a claim, but even the leftist magazine Time had to concede: Obama’s Stimulus Plan: Failing by Its Own Measure.
But now Obama wants to do the same thing again, and right now. Well, as Nancy Pelosi said about Obamacare, we must pass the bill to find out what’s in it. And this time it will work, he assures us. And if we don’t, his ally Mike Bloomberg, in the typical liberal mob way, warns of riots if they don’t get their way.
Yet, this has never even worked in history. Economic historian Burt Folsom writes in The sad story of presidents who think they can spend to create jobs, about two big-spending presidents who prolonged the Depression:
“The first two presidents to challenge this common sense method of creating jobs were Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, back to back presidents in the 1930s. Hoover sharply expanded government spending for infrastructure improvements. When that failed, FDR expanded government spending to “jump-start” the economy with targeted spending for key voting groups in battleground states he needed to win re-election. Those states enjoyed the infusion of federal cash, but the economy remained in depression because FDR had merely spent money on federal programs by taking it from people who would have spent it on themselves—which would have created new jobs in industry. Hoover and FDR showed that so-called stimulus packages don’t create jobs, and neither do targeted spending programs for key voting groups and businessmen.”
Indeed, there is no reason to believe that it will ever create real jobs. It might have been different if the money came down like manna from heaven, but it really comes from other taxpayers. So this is money that can’t be spent on businesses of the taxpayers’ choices, but on the politicians’ choices.
Many conservatives are just naive in thinking that Obama wants to fix the economy. But the whole point is the tried and proven FDR strategy: bribe voters and never mind the economy. In this case, Obama is pouring still more money into his union buddies, so they will continue to campaign for him. No wonder he calls for money to “fix schools” which will more likely end up with the solidly Democratic teachers unions. But schools are a local responsibility—why else are we gouged with high property taxes? If the localities can’t budget properly, why should the rest of the country bail them out?
So it should surprise only the most naive that invariably, while we can see jobs created by such “stimuli”, we don’t see the greater number of jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. Even Obama’s own figures admit that his new plan would cost well over $200,000 per job. How many more jobs could be created in the private sector for that amount?
Then Leftists throw up their hands in despair that the overall unemployment mysteriously goes up despite their best efforts. See also my early Patriot column Spendulus Spin. All they can do is claim, without the slightest evidence, that things would have been even worse without the stimulus: “It’s heads I win and tails you lose,” as economist Thomas Sowell put in his recent Patriot column Obama’s Plan Is Lousy Economics.
Leave things alone! Sowell points out a far better solution for the government : stay out of the economy!
“What about the track record of doing nothing? For more than the first century and a half of this nation, that was essentially what the federal government did—nothing. None of the downturns in all that time ever lasted as long as the Great Depression.
“An economic downturn in 1920–21 sent unemployment up to 12 percent. President Warren Harding did nothing, except for cutting government spending. The economy quickly rebounded on its own.
“In 1987, when the stock market declined more in one day than it had in any day in 1929, Ronald Reagan did nothing. There were outcries and outrage in the media. But Reagan still did nothing.
“That downturn not only rebounded, it was followed by 20 years of economic growth, marked by low inflation and low unemployment.”
Similarly, Harding’s vice president and successor Calvin Coolidge “did nothing” but slash tax rates and spending. American debt was reduced by 25%, unemployment plummeted to 2.4%, and there was a huge increase in entrepreneurship that developed Kleenex, scotch tape, the zipper, sliced bread, and especially the radio. See the Patriot column Remembering Calvin Coolidge: how he rescued America from a Depression.
Short-term fixes don’t work The late Milton Friedman should be well known to Patriots as a great defender of liberty, as well as a top economics scholar with the ability to explain it lucidly.
But Friedman himself regarded his most important scientific work as the permanent income hypothesis. That is: what consumers spend is proportional to what they perceive as their long-term income. Conversely, temporary fluctuations didn’t affect their spending behaviour, at least for those who plan in a rational manner.
This explains why temporary tax holidays have not had the expected (by leftists) boost to employment. An employer can be considered as a consumer of labor. A temporary reduction in costs is hardly going to tempt him to take on new staff, because he must consider his long-term costs. Employers typically need a three- to five-year time horizon for investing and hiring decisions.
A permanent tax cut, and permanent elimination of red tape, would do far more to increase hiring. A permanent cut of our high corporate tax rate—35%, the highest in the developed world—would encourage growth of companies in this country rather than outsourcing. It would also encourage repatriation of over a trillion dollars held by American countries overseas, gaining hundreds of billions for the Treasury alone, and helping jobs here, as Michele Bachmann has pointed out: Why “taxing the rich” will never work. There is an important lesson from the above: low taxes that are paid bring in more revenue than high taxes that are avoided. Trillions of dollars are staying overseas, out of reach of the IRS, because of our rapacious tax rate. Indeed, high tax rates have never brought in the expected income. Sowell, who is a scholar of the history of economic thought, as well as a top columnist, points out:
“In 1921 — federal income tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on ‘the rich’ got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes.”
Just as we see now, the wealthy just avoided taxes—legally—and the country’s economy remained stagnant:
“What happened was no mystery to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He pointed out that vast amounts of money that might have been invested in the economy were instead being invested in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds. “Secretary Mellon estimated that the amount of money invested in tax-exempt securities had nearly tripled in a decade. The amount of this money that the tax collector couldn’t touch was larger than the federal government’s annual budget and nearly half as large as the national debt. Big bucks went into hiding.”
Mellon proposed a cut to the high tax rate. But just like now, the Left were more interested in class warfare than what was best for the economy, and what happens to actual flesh and blood people, not only including the rich. So they similarly demagogued about “tax cuts for the rich”. But fortunately, sanity prevailed under Presidents Harding and Coolidge:
“As for the 1920s, Mellon eventually got his way, getting Congress to bring the top tax rate down from 73 percent to 24 percent. Vast sums of money that had seemingly vanished into thin air suddenly reappeared in the economy, creating far more jobs and far more tax revenue for the government.”
Even if all that were not enough, let’s grant all the premises of the taxophiles: assume that the money would be spent on real improvements to America, rather than to Obama and his friends. Let’s see some simple math about the money involved: Conclusion Mark Steyn writes in his brilliant new book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon:
“The United States is still different. In the wake of the economic meltdown, the decadent youth of France rioted over the most modest of proposals to increase their retirement age…. Everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria angry mobs besieged their parliaments demanding the same thing: Why didn’t you the government do more for me?”
“America was the only nation in the developed world where millions of people took to the streets to tell the state: I can do fine if you control-freak statists would shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless job bills, and your multimillion-dollar pork-athons, and just stay the hell out of my life and my pockets.”
“That’s the American that has a fighting chance ….” [pp. 22–23]
So we need the GOP to get some spine and stand up to Obama’s games—and make sure the country knows that they are not about American jobs, but about Obama’s job. And if they don’t, the Tea Party should replace the RINO appeasers with titanium-spined Republicans in the next primaries.
In his Tuesday evening address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey labeled President Barack Obama a “bystander in the Oval Office” who is preparing to “divide our nation to achieve re-election.”
Not limiting his criticism to Obama, Christie said Congress is “at war with itself” because they refuse to abandon “campaign style politics.”
“We watch a Congress at war with itself because they are unwilling to leave campaign style politics at the Capitol’s door. The result is a debt ceiling limitation debate that made our democracy appear as if we could no longer effectively govern ourselves,” Christie said Tuesday in Simi Valley, Calif.
“And still we continue to wait and hope that our president will finally stop being a bystander in the Oval Office. We hope that he will shake off the paralysis that has made it impossible for him to take on the really big things that are so obvious to all Americans and to a watching and anxious world,” he continued.
Christie, invited by former first lady Nancy Reagan to deliver a speech at the library, identified specific areas where he claims the president has failed to lead the nation: “The failure to stand up for the bipartisan debt solutions of the Simpson–Bowles Commission, a report the president asked for himself … the failure to act on the country’s crushing unemployment … the failure to act on ever expanding and rapidly eroding entitlement programs … the failure to discern pork barrel spending from real infrastructure investment,” he said.
In 2004, then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama “gave us a window into his vision for American leadership,” Christie said before quoting Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention that year. (RELATED: Christie speech unlikely to dampen presidential speculation)
“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us: the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and an Asian America. There is the United States of America,” Christie quoted from Obama’s remarks.
“Now, seven years later, President Obama prepares to divide our nation to achieve re-election,” said Christie, who repeated that he is not entering the 2012 presidential race. “This is not a leadership style, this is a re-election strategy. Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others.”
Apparently Barack Obama marched with the New Black Panthers in Selma, AL during his 2007 presidential campaign. The photos were uploaded to the photo sharing website Flickr, but have since been scrubbed clean, but someone was smart enough to get some screenshots before they were taken down.
These photos sort of make the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers make a little more sense. It may be that charges were dropped as a favor to Barack Obama’s friends instead of just an affirmative action dismissal.
From Big Government:
Injustice [J. Christian Adams' book, which will be released Tuesday] includes a disturbing photo of Shabazz and the Panthers marching behind Obama with raised fists in the “Black Power” salute.
There are even more photographs. This is another example of the media’s failure to properly report this president to the American people. While President Obama probably isn’t a member of the New Black Panthers, he most certainly has ties to an organization that has called for the murdering of Dekalb County, GA police officers and then mocking their widows.
Photos are in the article, click on the link to see them.
Instead of showing leadership, Obama pointed fingers. Instead of taking ownership, Obama washed his hands. Instead of swearing to take control of the economy and work with Congress to solve the problem, Obama put the responsibility on Congress for whatever happens.
President Obama spent 75 excruciating minutes at a White House press conference last week touting his “jobs” bill and accusing Republicans in Congress of blocking an economic resurgence. He took questions from nine reporters and delivered long and tedious answers. Two days earlier, by the way, New Jersey governor Chris Christie got 42 questions (not including follow-ups) and gave terse replies during a 50-minute session in which he said he won’t be running for president in 2012.
From Obama, we learned his burning desire to raise taxes hasn’t cooled. He offered 11 reasons (by my count) why higher taxes would be beneficial. This must be some kind of record. He talked about tax hikes as if they were good for whatever ails the country or at least bothers him—Dr. Obama’s Magic Elixir.
It’s a potion that has no bad side effects. Higher taxes won’t stifle economic growth and job creation, according to Obama, despite empirical evidence to the contrary. If Obama is for a bigger tax bite, who can be against it? Answer: Only Republicans who put “party over country.”
Raising taxes equals deficit reduction in Obama’s perfect world. And if taxes aren’t hiked, “millionaires and billionaires . . . have lower tax rates in some cases than plumbers and teachers.” But if taxes are increased, “we can put teachers and construction workers and veterans back on the job.” That’s three reasons right there.
Obama favors “what we call the Buffett rule, which is that millionaires and billionaires aren’t paying lower tax rates than ordinary families.” Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has been thrilling liberals for years by claiming the wealthy should be paying more in taxes. Thus the current version of the jobs bill would slap a 5.6 percent surtax on anyone making $1 million or more.
But let’s move on. Higher taxes would not only “pay for the jobs bill,” but attaching them to the measure would improve its chances of passage. The new taxes would be a step toward “making our tax system fair and just and promoting growth.” Yes, the president actually suggested his tax hike would stimulate the economy. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means it achieves this indirectly. Higher taxes would also be “a balanced approach to deficit reduction”—that is, a mixture of spending cuts and taxes.
Not only that, but an increase in taxes would answer the Republican charge that “we can’t afford” the jobs bill. “Well, we can afford it if we’re willing to ask people like me to do a little bit more in taxes,” Obama said.
Besides, it’s either keeping the current tax rates “for folks who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them” or reducing the payroll tax “for virtually every worker and small business in America,” according to Obama. “But we can’t afford to do both.”
Obama justifies tax increases in inventive ways. In his speeches, he talks about “a thread running through our history.” It’s a belief that “we’re all connected, that I am my brother’s keeper and my sister’s keeper, that there are some things that we can only do together as a nation.” Presidents Lincoln and Eisenhower “invested in railways and highways and science and technology.”
More to the point, “this country” gave veterans “the chance to go to college on the GI Bill,” and it “made an investment” in him and first lady Michelle Obama. Now there are other talented students who need help. “Are we going to be there for them?” he asked at a Dallas campaign fundraiser last week. “It’s time for us to meet those responsibilities right now.”
The president wasn’t talking about charitable contributions to colleges or gifts to individual students. He put “investing” in students in the same category as the military and fire and police protection, things that only government provides. He was justifying higher taxes.
For Obama, “fair” is a code word for raising taxes. He wants “an America where everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share.” This, in Obama’s words, is “an America where we’re thinking about how we can get ahead and how we can move forward, but also how the guy next to us, or the gal over here, can also succeed. Because we have confidence that if all of us are pulling in the same direction, then all of us are going to do better.”
Another of Obama’s code words for higher taxes: sacrifice. “Dealing with our deficit in an effective way,” he told Ann Curry of NBC News last summer, requires that “everybody makes some sacrifices.” But not “sacrifices in programs that the vast majority of the American people think are really important.” Never that.
He said “government programs like food safety or weather satellites are still up there, making sure that our veterans are properly cared for.” Obama added: “You can’t pay for those things unless we have some additional revenue.” In Obama’s lexicon, “revenue” is a euphemism for taxes, just as “investment” is for spending.
Obama sometimes doubles up on the code words for more taxes. “The story of America,” he said at a fundraiser in Washington in September, “is all of us joining together and everybody sharing in sacrifice.” What he has in mind here is for the tax burden on the well-to-do—their “share”—to go up. They alone would “sacrifice.”
It would be good for them. “They’d be doing better, they’d be making more money,” Obama said at last week’s press conference, even as their tax bill soars. The temporary payroll tax reductions in his bill would give “ordinary Americans” more cash and leave them “feeling more confident about the economy.”
That’s an “irony” of American history, he said. “When folks in the middle and at the bottom are doing well, the folks at the top do even better.” So we have still another code word for raising taxes: irony. Morphing higher taxes into a magic elixir for prosperity is quite a feat. Obama isn’t succinct, unlike Chris Christie. But he sure is clever.
SOUTH BEND - Suspected fake petition pages to place Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the ballot during the 2008 Indiana primary passed through the county voter registration office on days when the Republican head of the office was absent, The Tribune has learned.
The pages in question bear the stamped signature of Republican Linda Silcott, indicating Silcott was not in the office at the time to sign the documents by hand. By comparison, most of the other, non-suspicious pages examined by The Tribune contain Silcott's written signature.
Related Clinton, Obama campaigns rushed Indiana primary petitions in 2008 Find out if your signature ended up on Clinton's petitions Example: See writing samples from the petitions that clearly illustrate the same handwriting across multiple pages Meanwhile, 13 more St. Joseph County residents whose signatures appear on the petitions, including former South Bend mayor and Indiana governor Joe Kernan, have come forward to say they did not sign the documents, and the Indiana Republican Party has called for a federal investigation into the matter.
"How deep does this problem go?" state GOP Chair Eric Holcomb asked. "Is it isolated to St. Joseph County or was it a broader, coordinated effort across the state? ... Who forged the signatures and why?"
Typically, petition pages in St. Joseph County are signed by hand by both the Republican and Democratic members of the Board of Voter Registration.
In early 2008, however, Silcott missed a number of days of work because of the death of her husband. Consequently, her first deputy, Mary Carrol Ringler, often stamped Silcott's signature on the pages.
Each of the suspected fake petition pages bears Silcott's stamped signature, indicating the documents passed through the office on days when she was off.
Though Ringler was the only person permitted to use the stamp, she kept it in an unlocked desk drawer, Silcott said.
In addition, Ringler only began working in voter registration on Jan. 22, 2008. The suspicious petition pages are dated Jan. 28 and 29 and Feb. 4 and 5, within the first two weeks of her arrival.
Ringler told The Tribune Tuesday she could not recall how often she used the stamp during the 2008 primary. "Honestly, I don’t know," she said. "I know I didn’t do a lot petitions that year because I was brand new." She said she mainly uses it on purchase orders now.
Pam Brunette's written signature also appears on the backs of the suspicious petition pages. She is the Democratic member of the Board of Voter Registration.
Brunette did not respond Tuesday to a call seeking comment about the stamped pages. She said last week that voter registration workers “are not handwriting experts, so our job is basically making sure the papers are complete.”
Parties respond
As part of a joint investigation, The Tribune and Howey Politics Indiana reported Sunday that dozens, if not hundreds, of signatures on petitions to place Obama and Clinton on the Indiana primary ballot in 2008 were faked in St. Joseph County.
Before that story was published, The Tribune spoke with more than 30 people whose names appeared on the petitions. All but one confirmed not signing the documents. In addition, a forensic document analyst identified a number of suspicious pages that appeared to have been filled out by a single person.
Since then, Kernan, now owner of the Silver Hawks, and 12 others have also told The Tribune they did not sign the documents.
"No, not at all," Kernan said when asked if the signature next to his name on the Obama petition looked like his own. "Nor does the printing look like mine."
In addition, Holcomb, the state Republican Party chair, has called on the Department of Justice to investigate the matter.
"The integrity of every election is of the utmost importance," Holcomb said in a news release. "This weekend’s disturbing news that perhaps hundreds of ballot access petition signatures submitted by the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are fraudulent raises real questions about the integrity of our process and whether or not those individuals should have been on the primary ballot in the first place."
In response to the ongoing joint investigation by The Tribune and Howey Politics, county Prosecutor Michael Dvorak has launched his own investigation into the faked signatures.
That said, identifying the person or persons responsible for the fakery is a difficult task. Dozens, if not hundreds, of volunteers carried petitions on behalf of now Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama in the county in 2008, both independently and as part of each candidate’s official campaign.
In addition, receipts that would have identified the people involved in gathering signatures on behalf of the two candidates no longer exist. Voter Registration is required to keep records for only 24 months.
The Office of the Secretary of State did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment on this story. Earlier requests by phone and e-mail also went unanswered.
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, referred the matter to the Indiana Democratic Party, which issued this statement Tuesday:
"The 2008 presidential petitions ... were approved and certified as valid by the Democratic and Republican members of the local ... Office of Voter Registration. But even an isolated instance of misconduct ... should be thoroughly investigated, and we support such an inquiry."
The White House surely must have not appreciated many of the headlines coming out from the President’s second taxpayer-funded campaign bus tour of the year. Whether it was reminding taxpayers he was campaigning on their dime, lawmakers from his own party avoiding him like the plague, or getting a fact check for his spin about his Stimulus 2.0 plan, the White House must be wondering if they got any political mileage at all.
LA Times: “Obama Ends Bus Tour With Pitch To Subdued Crowd”: “Closing out his bus tour on a low-key note, President Obama made a pitch for his jobs package at a firehouse, where a subdued crowd needed a bit of prompting to applaud his proposal to boost the economy.” (Peter Nicholas, “Obama Ends Bus Tour With Pitch To Subdued Crowd,” Los Angeles Times, 10/19/2011)
President Obama Gets Fact Checked For His Spin On The Job Creating Potential Of His Stimulus 2.0 Plan: “President Obama exaggerates when he claims “independent economists” say his jobs bill “would create nearly 2 million jobs.” The median estimate in a survey of 34 economists showed 288,000 jobs could be saved or created over two years under the president’s plan.” (Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley, “Obama’s Spin on Jobs Bill,” Factcheck.org, 10/20/2011)
CBS News Reminds Taxpayers They’re On The Hook For Obama’s Campaign Bus Tour: “If Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain or any of the other presidential challengers were to embark on a three-day bus trip like the one now underway by President Obama, it would cost their campaigns tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps more … But not the Obama campaign. The White House declared that Mr. Obama's three-day trip through North Carolina and Virginia are official events and not campaign appearances, even though the two states are known to be political objectives of his re-election bid.” (Mark Knoller, “Obama's bus tour costing taxpayers thousands,” CBS News, 10/18/2011))
Politico’s Glenn Thrush: “Obama Bus Not Magic In Virginia”: “President Barack Obama’s bus trip into the commonwealth on Tuesday drew hundreds of devoted followers — and cold shoulders from some high-profile Virginia Democrats … Obama isn’t the hot ticket he used to be — a fall 2008 end-of-campaign rally in northern Virginia drew more than 80,000 screaming admirers …” (Glenn Thrush, “Obama Bus Not Magic In Virginia,” Politico, 10/18/2011))
Time Magazine Highlights Obama’s Popularity Problem Among Voters Living Along The Bus Route: “The trip’s route has been telling. Repeating his victories in these pivotal Southern battlegrounds will be a challenge for Obama. Recent polls have shown his support sliding in Virginia, a state he won by a seven-point margin four years ago. The President’s popularity problem is particularly acute among the white, blue-collar workers who form of the backbone of rural communities in the Old Dominion and around the country.” (Alex Altman, “Where Obama’s Hurting: In Piedmont and the Polls,” Time Magazine, 10/19/2011)
From now thru November 2012 this should be required weekly or at least monthly, reading - BY ALL WHO VOTE!!!
Did you notice who Obama threatened when he wasn't getting his way on raising the debt ceiling?
He threatened to not pay: Social Security Retirees, Military Retirees, Social Security disability and Federal Retirees.
Now.. Let this sink in really good -
He did not threaten to stop payments to illegal aliens
He did not threatened to take frivolous benefits such as Internet access away from violent inmates
He did not offer to fire some of the thousands of unnecessary federal employees that he hired
He did not offer to cut down on his or his wife's frivolous gallivanting around
He did not threaten to not pay the senators and representatives or any of their staff
He did not threaten to take benefits away from welfare recipients
He did not threaten the food stamp programs
He did not threaten to not pay foreign aid
He did not threaten to cut back on anything that involves his base voters
The list could go on and on. He is in full political re-election mode!
Why are we allowing this person to destroy this wonderful country with his selfishness and his lies?
His type of change is killing our country. He needs to be stopped and only our votes can stop him.
Do not forget about his tactics when it's election time. Vote Obama out of the Presidency in 2012.
2012 - THE END OF AN ERROR!
Democracy... is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty ... is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -- Benjamin Franklin
AMERICA..... HOME OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE
PRAY FOR OUR TROOPS
ELECTION 2012 IS COMING!!!
A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves. I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON. Let's Take a Stand!
Obama: Gone! Borders: Closed! Language: English only Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare! NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!
President Barack Obama is getting round his self-imposed ban on accepting campaign donations from registered lobbyists – by accepting it from unregistered lobbyists instead.
Microphones accidently left on after G20 meeting pick up private conversation between US, French presidents. Sarkozy admits he 'can't stand' Israeli premier. Obama: You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!
President Barack Obama is expected to ask Congress to raise the Nation’s borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion this week, marking the third and final increase from a deal negotiated over summer.
The Treasury Department says that the increase is needed because the Federal government will be within $100 billion of its current spending limit by Friday. The newest increase will bring the amount of money borrowed by the U.S. government to fund its operations to $16.4 trillion and allow it to keep borrowing until after the 2012 Presidential election.
Leaving behind a year of bruising legislative battles, President Barack Obama enters his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda and may even benefit in his re-election campaign if lawmakers accomplish little in 2012. Absent any major policy pushes, much of the year will focus on winning a second term. The president will keep up a robust domestic travel schedule and aggressive campaign fundraising and use executive action to try to boost the economy. Partisan, down-to-the-wire fights over allowing the nation to take on more debt and sharply reducing government spending defined 2011. In the new year, there are almost no must-do pieces of legislation facing the president and Congress. The one exception is the looming debate on a full-year extension of a cut in the Social Security payroll tax rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to put in place that extension. Aides say the president will not turn his back on Congress completely in the new year. He is expected to once again push lawmakers to pass elements of his jobs bill that were blocked by Republicans last fall. If those efforts fail, the White House says, Obama's re-election year will focus almost exclusively on executive action.
President Obama keeps pushing for gun control. "I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control]. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar,” President Obama told Sarah Brady, the former president of the Brady Campaign, this past spring. His push as been quiet but relentless.
Pushing the limits of his recess appointment powers, President Obama on Wednesday bypassed the Senate to install three members of the National Labor Relations Board and a director for the controversial new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - moves Republicans said amounted to unconstitutional power grabs.
Mr. Obama said the appointments, which he previewed during a campaign-style speech in Ohio, were necessary because Senate Republicans have blocked him at every turn. But in making the move, he rejected three precedents, including two in which he played a part, that would have blocked the appointments.
“I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Mr. Obama said in Shaker Heights, drawing applause from his audience. “When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.”
President Obama said the following in making his so-called recess appointments and bypassing Congress, “When Congress refuses to act — and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk — then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.” These are the words of a dictator. Dictators always promise that what they’re doing is for the people. Have you ever heard a dictator saying that what he was doing was going to destroy the nation, hurt the people, and lead the nation to ruin? I don’t think so. But the history books are filled with stories of dictators doing these very things.
Hard facts ought to prevail where American security is concerned. This applies equally whether the issue at hand is the geopolitical consequences of ill-advised defense cuts or the possibility that waste and fraud in military procurement might result in the deaths of American soldiers. It is in that spirit that we view President Obama's announcement last week at the Pentagon of his new national defense doctrine. While there will be much more to say here in the future, two points stand out for now. First, Obama claimed that "even as our troops continue to fight in Afghanistan, the tide of war is receding." What logically should have followed such an assertion was something about the surrender of an enemy and assurance that his defeat was so total and comprehensive that decades, if not centuries, will pass before he might again threaten the safety and security of the American people.
Obama could say nothing like that because no such surrender has been tendered, and it is clear to anybody with open eyes that the aggressors in the War on Terror are -- Osama bin Laden's death notwithstanding -- planning lethal new attacks on Americans here at home and American interests around the world. It is as though FDR had said in April 1943 that the tide of World War II was receding and therefore it was time to slash American defense spending because American pilots had shot down a plane carrying Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, chief planner behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. No matter that Japanese troops still occupied half of the Pacific and would continue to wage war against the U.S.
Second, another Obama decision became public last week: The chief executive wants to give federal civil servants a half-percent pay raise. The absurdity of this proposal is clear in light of the excellent reporting of USA Today's Dennis Cauchon. In a series of stories in 2010 that drew emotional criticism from federal employee union leaders but no factual refutations, Cauchon used the government's own data to show that civil servants' compensation has far outstripped that of private-sector workers. "The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade," Cauchon found. "Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available." If anything, Obama should freeze federal pay indefinitely so private-sector employees can catch up with the bureaucrats.
To be sure, the proposed raise is so small as to be largely symbolic, but that's precisely the point: It carries a vital re-election year message from Obama to a key sector of his base constituency -- unionized public employees. It tells them Obama will take care of them, even as he paves the way for firing half a million men and women in uniform who likely are not among his re-election supporters. The hard-eyed conclusion here must be that winning re-election is more important to Obama than assuring American security at home and abroad.
