Conservative Happenings

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Left’s Fight-for-$15 Scam

The current feel-good push for a $15 an hour minimum wage has nothing to do with helping workers and everything to do with advancing the goals of the left wing, especially the labor movement.

This is true despite the occasionally soaring rhetoric of President Obama amid the Left’s incessant whining about “income inequality,” itself a particularly un-American concept, an imaginary evil that dwells only in the nightmares of left-wingers. The fact gets lost that the minimum wage itself and continuing increases in the minimum wage hurt working people. Period. And as economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, minimum wage laws themselves have an inglorious history, having been used to price minorities out of labor markets. If a racist business owner has a choice between a person whose race he likes and someone whose race he doesn’t like and their services cost the same, take a guess whom he’ll pick.

Raising the hourly minimum wage, whether to a job-killing $15 or a higher dollar figure, isn’t intended to aid those who are financially struggling. It’s not compassionate; in fact it’s the opposite. It doesn’t help the poor. It’s a left-wing vote-buying scam that moves money around on an Alinskyite chess board. Democrats desperately want to recapture the House and Senate so they can impose even more destructive progressive policies on the populace. They use the minimum wage, which has become a “motherhood” issue for the Left in recent years. It gets bleeding-heart voters to the polls the way that opposition to same-sex marriage used to get conservative voters to the polls.

Hiking required hourly pay is about redistributing wealth to fat-cat labor unions and recruiting Democratic voters. It allows the gluttonous Left to gorge itself on other people’s money.

No serious economist doubts that raising the minimum wage eliminates jobs from the workforce. How it does this is not rocket science.

Workers whose skills aren’t worth $15 an hour to employers, teenagers for example, won’t get hired. Summer jobs and part-time jobs for students evaporate which makes young scholars more dependent on student loan programs. Businesses like fast food purveyors don’t want to be forced out of business. Justifiably insistent on preserving their profitability, they fire employees and install specialized robots and touch-screen ordering systems. Major restaurant chains and gas station-convenience stores are already doing this.

Some of the newly unemployed people end up on welfare which helps to expand the size and scope of government. People who are dependent on the government tend to support Democrats. It’s a big win-win for the Left no matter how you look at it.

New York’s loud left-wing demagogue of a governor, the relentlessly strident Andrew Cuomo (D), wants to impose the $15 an hour wage mandate on a specific industry without bothering to consult the state legislature in Albany because he knows such a move is a crowd pleaser. A panel of lapdogs appointed by Cuomo gave him political cover by recommending last week that the minimum wage be raised to $15 for all fast-food restaurant chains of a certain size in New York State.

Via: Canada Free Press

Obama Says He Could Win Again - True or False?

In a recent speech criticizing African political leaders who stay too long in office, President Obama said he could win a third term if he ran for president again but acknowledged that U.S. law does not allow it. Could Obama win again?

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% of Likely U.S. Voters say they would vote for the president if he ran for a third term. Sixty-three percent (63%) would not. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

Most Democrats (57%) would vote to give Obama a third term. Ninety-three percent (93%) of Republicans, 68% of voters not affiliated with either major party - and 32% of Democrats - would not.

Obama defeated Republican nominee John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin in 2008 and was reelected with 51% of the vote against GOP candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits presidential candidates from being elected to more than two four-year terms. Nineteen percent (19%) of all voters believe that amendment should be changed so presidents can serve longer. Seventy-eight percent (78%) oppose such a change.

Interestingly, only 32% of Democrats support changing this amendment. Ninety percent (90%) of GOP voters and 82% of unaffiliateds are opposed.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 28-29, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Obama’s daily job approval rating continue to hover in the negative mid-teens as they have for most of his presidency.

Majorities of voters across most demographic groups oppose changing the Constitution to allow presidents to serve more than two terms and would not vote for Obama if he ran for a third term.

The older the voter, the less likely he or she is to say they would vote for Obama.

Most black voters (54%), however, would change the constitutional amendment. Just 10% of whites and 38% of other minority voters agree.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of black voters would vote to elect Obama to a third term, compared to 22% of white voters and 39% of other minority voters.

Among voters who favor changing the Constitution to allow presidents to serve more than two terms, 74% would vote for Obama if he ran again.

Eighty-nine percent (89%) of all voters want to continue using the Constitution as the fundamental law of the United States, and 59% say legislators should leave it alone.

Just over half (51%) of voters think Obama has been less faithful to the U.S. Constitution than his predecessors in the Oval Office.

Voters continue to overwhelmingly favor term limits for members of Congress but don’t expect legislators to meet this demand.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it’s free) or follow us on Twitter orFacebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

Via Rasmussen

HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF: WE WON’T CALL CHATTANOOGA ‘ISLAMIC TERRORISM’ OUT OF RESPECT FOR MUSLIMS

THEY HAVE NO RESPECT FOR US, WHY SHOULD WE HAVE ANY FORM THEM??

Why won’t the Obama administration call Fort Hood Islamic Terrorism? Why aren’t they calling Chattanooga Islamic Terrorism? Because it’s disrespect to Muslims and Islam is about peace:

ARUTZ SHEVA – Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson announced the policy this past Friday at Aspen Institute’s annual security forum in Washington, D.C. He explained that though it was a Muslim terrorist who shot to death four unarmed Marines in Tennessee two weeks ago, the government will call the attack, and other similar ones, “violent extremism” and not “Islamic terrorism” – out of respect for the Muslim community.

Johnson said it is “critical” to refrain from the “Islamic” label in order to “build trust” among Muslims.

The Tennessee murderer, Mohammad Abdulazeez, is officially a “homegrown violent extremist,” according to the government – even though he blogged about his Islamic religious motivations for the attack. He and his family also attended a local mosque controlled by a terror-tied Islamic trust.

Johnson explained that if officials called Islamic terrorism “Islamic,” they’d “get nowhere” in gaining the “cooperation” of the Muslim community.

The moderator of the panel tried to protest: “Isn’t [the] government denying the fundamental religious component of this kind of extremism by not using the word Islamic?”

“I could not disagree more,” Johnson responded, and explained that Islam “is about peace.”

So if we say we want Muslims to stand up against Islamic extremism but we won’t call it Islamic extremism, how will they know it’s Islamic extremism if we won’t even tell the truth about it?

Heck, it’s not even extremism, really. It is simply Muslims taking their religion very, very seriously and trying to walk in the footsteps of Muhammad. Now there is an extreme component to it, as some believe the time is now to wage Jihad and others believe that time will come when their Mahdi returns. But that’s just a matter of ‘when’, not ‘what’.

But hey, let’s not offend Muslims here by telling the truth about Islam. Let’s just pretend Jihadis are just a bunch of angry poor people who can’t get jobs in their countries. And let’s send them money to see if that fixes the problem.

Good plan.

Via: The Right Scoop

Friday, July 31, 2015

Michael Bay's New Movie About Benghazi Could Be BAD NEWS For Queen Hillary

I'll be honest, I had no idea this movie was even being made until I saw the trailer -

Holy cow. This may be one Michael Bay movie that I actually put down money to go see (how in the WORLD a movie like this got past the liberal Hollywood gatekeepers, I will never know).

Dana Perino was on "The Kelly File" to talk about the potential impact this movie could have on Hillary Clinton's campaign and she makes some pretty good points about it -

Here's the thing about Michael Bay - critics don't like his movies. Shoot, I don't like his movies. But people go see his movies, regardless of what critics or the Hollywood elites say. Whether it's Pearl Harbor or Transformers or Ninja Turtles (which he only produced but, details), his movies are very successful at the box office. I'm sure plenty of low-info types are going to be looking through their movie options in January (which, there's rarely ANYTHING good playing at the theaters in January. Other than a bunch of pretentious Oscar-bait trash), and they'll be all "Hey - a new Michael Bay movie's out! Let's go see it!" And they will go see this movie. And they will see "This is a True Story." And they will hear the story of what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Many of them will be hearing about this for the first time.

Like Dana said, we don't know anything about the movie other than the trailer. Hillary could come out of this looking like a hero or a villain. Or she might not even be mentioned in the movie. But it's an opportunity to get the truth out.

How about you? Will you go see 13 Hours?

Via: Chicks on the Right

Higher wages a surprising success for Seattle restaurant

THIS IS ONE RESTAURANT OUT OF HUNDREDS, AND DOES NOT SPELL SUCCESS IN BY BOOK!!

Menu prices are up 21 percent and you don't have to tip at Ivar's Salmon House on Seattle's Lake Union after the restaurant decided to institute the city's $15-an-hour minimum wage two years ahead of schedule.

It is staff, not diners, who feel the real difference, with wages as much as 60 percent higher than before. One waitress is saving for accounting classes and finding it easier to take weekend vacations, while another server is using the added pay to cover increased rent.

Seattle's law, adopted last year after a strong push from labor and grassroots activists, bumped the city's minimum wage to $11 beginning April 1, above Washington state's highest-in-the-nation $9.47. Scheduled increases that depend on business size and benefits will bring the minimum to $15 within four years for large businesses and seven years for smaller ones.

There's little data yet on how the law's working.

"To the extent that we can look at macro patterns, we're not seeing a problem," said Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.

As Washington, D.C., and other cities consider following Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles in phasing in a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Ivar's approach, adopted in April, offers lessons in how some businesses might adapt. Ivar's Seafood Restaurants President Bob Donegan decided to raise prices, tell customers that they don't need to tip, and parcel the added revenue among the hourly staff.

For some of the restaurant's lesser paid workers - including bussers and dishwashers - that's meant as much as 60 percent more. Revenue has soared, supportive customers are leaving additional tips even though they don't need to, and servers and bartenders are on pace to increase their annual pay by thousands, with wages for a few of the best compensated approaching $80,000 a year.

"It's been a surprise," Donegan said. "The customers seem to like it, the employees seem to like it, and it seems to be working, at least in this location."

Rochelle Hann, 25, is a second-generation worker at Ivar's. Like her mom, she has performed a variety of roles, including serving, bookkeeping and even dressing up as a giant clam. If she keeps working 30 hours a week, her annual pay will jump about $12,000 - money she's socking away for accounting classes at a community college.

"Before, I felt like it was maybe not quite paycheck-to-paycheck, but now I don't even have to worry about it," she said. "I just went away for the weekend, and it was an easy expense."

Brett Richards, a 50-year-old singer and guitarist, has worked 25 years in food service, including the past eight at Ivar's. Before, he made minimum wage, plus tips. Now, he gets $15 an hour, plus a share of the 21 percent menu price increase, plus any additional tips customers leave. He expects to make almost $7,000 more this year, money that's helping him with his increased rent and with taking his kids out to eat a little more often.

Via: CNBC

Desperate Dems Recycle Planned Parenthood's Mammogram Lie by Michelle Malkin

The gruesome hits keep coming for the baby butchers of Planned Parenthood. President Obama and his top health officials have one last-ditch response left: Quick, hide behind the imaginary mammogram machine!

As more graphic, money-grubbing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood's for-profit aborted baby parts racket emerge thanks to the investigative work of the Center for Medical Progress, desperate Democrats are in full deflection mode. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell defended federal funding for Planned Parenthood this week by invoking the women's health shield. "What I think is important is that our HHS funding is focused on issues of preventative care for women, things like mammograms," Burwell told the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Just one teeny, tiny problem with this defense: It's a completely calculated fabrication.

The breast-cancer screening charade casts Planned Parenthood as a life-saving provider of vital health services unavailable anywhere else. You may recall that during the 2012 presidential cycle, Obama himself falsely claimed during a debate that the abortion provider administers mammograms to "millions" of women -- and liberal CNN moderator Candy Crowley let him get away with it.

On cue, Hollywood activists Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington all attacked the GOP ticket for wanting to "end" funding for "cancer screenings" by cutting off government subsidies for Planned Parenthood's bloody billion-dollar abortion business. The celebrities in the White House and Tinseltown took their script straight from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, who purported to speak for countless women for whom Planned Parenthood is "the only way" they can gain access to mammograms. (If the name sounds familiar, Nucatola is the same wine-swishing Josephine Mengele who was exposed on tape by the Center for Medical Progress two weeks ago lolling through a business lunch negotiating payments for aborted baby parts.)

Once again, it was undercover pro-life journalists who unmasked the truth.

An investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, conducted by pro-life group Live Action, confirmed that the abortion provider does not perform breast-cancer screenings. "We don't provide those services whatsoever," a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona confessed on tape.

Planned Parenthood's Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kan., admitted: "We actually don't have a, um, mammogram machine at our clinics."

Even the liberal Washington Post doled out a three (out of four) Pinocchio rating for the White House's mammogram lies. "The problem here is that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so," the paper's resident fact-checker reported. "As such, the organization certainly does not 'provide' mammograms in the strict sense. Instead, its clinics provide referrals and direct low-income women toward resources to help pay for the procedure. These services are by no means unique to Planned Parenthood. In fact, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society provide them, as well."

As I've pointed out previously, Planned Parenthood's purported "referral services" to outside mammogram facilities are negligible -- especially given the widespread availability of these and other free and low-cost breast and cervical cancer screening services across the country supported by both private and public grants.

Reluctant to do its job and just call out the president as an outright liar, The Washington Post fell short of giving Obama the full four-Pinocchio treatment for his Planned Parenthood mammogram propagandizing, but acknowledged that he has repeated the lies "too many times in one form or another for this to be considered just playing with words to generate a misleading impression."

The Obama HHS apparently needs to be reminded of its own review exposing the mammography deception. In June 2012, the agency responded to a request for information about how many Planned Parenthood clinics were certified to operate mammogram facilities. "Our search did not find any documents pertinent to your request," HHS told the Alliance Defense Fund.

Zip. Zilch. None. Nada.

Pro-life investigative journalist Lila Rose of Live Action has it right: "It is an alarming dereliction of duty that the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to view investigative reports that clearly demonstrate that Planned Parenthood, who receives close to half a million taxpayer dollars a year from the federal government, is engaged in the selling and trafficking of aborted baby body parts for profit," she said this week. "Ms. Burwell should be investigating Planned Parenthood, not covering for them."

Ladies, open your eyes and hearts. Watch the videos for yourselves. Get the facts. Unmask the lies. The cackling profiteers of Planned Parenthood don't care about your breasts. They're too busy putting price tags on the baby hearts, livers, lungs and limbs swirling around in bloody pie plates, stacked in their "research" labs, subsidized with your tax dollars and sold to the highest bidders. For "preventative care," of course.

Via: Real Clear Politics

USCIS Denies That Modifications to Oath of Allegiance Flout the Law

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has denied that the modifications to military service requirements in the Oath of Allegiance published on July 21 flout the law, despite harsh criticism from immigration experts and members of Congress.

“Candidates for citizenship normally declare that they will ‘bear arms on behalf of the United States’ and ‘perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States’ when required by law,” stated USCIS on July 21. “A candidate may be eligible to exclude these two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.”

The new guidelines, which appear under the heading “Modifications to Oath of Allegiance for Naturalization,” state that a candidate “is not required to belong to a specific church or religion, follow a particular theology or belief, or to have had religious training in order to qualify,” and “may submit, but is not required to provide, an attestation from a religious or other type of organization, as well as other evidence to establish eligibility.”

Immigration experts and some on Capitol Hill say that this represents a substantive change, and a bill has been introduced in Congress to roll back USCIS’s actions.

Christopher Bentley, the chief of media relations at USCIS, denies that the changes are at odds with the law, and says that the July 22 message was meant for internal use by USCIS employees.

“There are no changes, the law has been quite clear since 1952 that modifications are allowed should individuals have religious-based or conscientious objector-based objections to saying those parts of the Oath of Allegiance,” said Bentley. “So that’s always been the case and people have always been allowed to in essence opt out of saying that if they have those firmly held beliefs.”

Bentley said that this new guidance was not meant to be a public announcement, but rather an internal announcement to USCIS officers. Because the agency wants to be transparent as possible, Bentley says they let the public know what was in the policy manual.

“That policy manual was intended for our employees to help make sure that they’re making consistent decisions in immigration cases as opposed to informing the public of something writ large—we weren’t doing that, we were making sure that our employees understood so they could make good decisions.”

Bentley says that immigrants still have to be able to document that the objection is a firmly held belief.

Via: WFB

Social Security: $39 Billion Deficit in 2014, Insolvent by 2035

Abstract

Social Security ran a $39 billion deficit in 2014, closing out five years of consecutive cash-flow deficits as the program’s revenues from the payroll tax and the taxation of benefits are falling short of benefit payments. Absent reform, Social Security benefits will be cut across the board by 23 percent in 2035. Action should be taken today to protect Social Security’s most vulnerable beneficiaries from such drastic cuts without burdening younger generations with massive tax increases or unsustainable debt. Lawmakers should immediately replace the current cost-of-living adjustment with the more accurate chained consumer price index; raise the early and full retirement ages gradually and predictably; phase in a universal, flat benefit; focus Social Security benefits on those who need them most; and enable more Americans to save their money in private retirement accounts.

Social Security’s main program, also known as Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI), ran a $39 billion deficit in 2014, closing out five years of consecutive cash-flow deficits as the program’s unfunded obligations continue to grow.[1] According to the 2015 annual Trustees’ Report, the 75-year unfunded obligation of the Social Security OASI Trust Fund is $9.43 trillion, a $70 billion increase from last year’s unfunded obligation of $9.36 trillion.[2] After including federal debt obligations recorded as assets to the Social Security trust fund of $2.73 trillion, Social Security’s total 75-year unfunded obligation is nearly $12.2 trillion.

The Social Security OASI program is projected to reach insolvency in 2035. This means that the program is expected to have only enough revenue from payroll taxes, interest on the Trust Fund balance, and repayment of borrowed Trust Fund dollars to pay out scheduled benefits until 2035. This is one year later than projected in last year’s report.[3]

If no action is taken to improve Social Security’s solvency before its Trust Fund runs dry, benefits will either be delayed or reduced across the board by 23 percent. Congress should avoid indiscriminate benefit cuts which would harm the most vulnerable beneficiaries the most by adopting commonsense reforms that modernize the outdated Social Security program.

Social Security Is Already Adding to the Deficit

While Social Security’s OASI program is considered to be solvent on paper through 2035, Social Security’s cash-flow deficit is already adding to the federal budget deficit.

Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program’s cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees’ intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security’s cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt.

Social Security’s cash-flow deficits add to the public debt because, in order to pay full Social Security benefits, the Treasury Department has to raise cash in excess of what it receives from the payroll tax and the taxation of benefits. Cash-flow deficits mean that the Treasury can no longer pay all Social Security benefits from the program’s tax income alone. Instead, Treasury must produce additional cash from taxes or borrowing. With annual federal deficits in excess of Social Security’s cash-flow deficit, the OASI program is already adding to the deficit.

What About the Trust Fund?

In the past, when Social Security ran cash-flow surpluses, the federal government spent those surpluses on other federal spending, and in return, the Treasury credited Social Security’s Trust Fund with special-issue government securities. Although this $2.73 trillion in securities is not counted in the total amount of debt held by the public, it represents real debt that will have to be repaid over the coming decades, unless Congress changes current law.[4]

The Social Security Trust Fund represents legitimate repayments plus interest, but this distinction has no bearing on the federal budget’s bottom line. Congress spent all the excess revenues when Social Security was running surpluses, and now repaying those revenues is adding to deficits. As Chart 1 shows, shortfalls in Social Security’s programs represent a considerable portion of current and future deficits.

Nevertheless, Congress may change current law at any time, including by eliminating the Social Security Trust Fund. Funds earmarked for OASI through its Trust Fund do not represent accrued property rights, even though these funds come from taxing workers’ wages. Congress’s authority to modify the Social Security program was affirmed in the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Flemming v. Nestor, wherein the Court held that individuals do not have a “property right” to their Social Security benefits, regardless of how many years they paid payroll taxes.[5]

Via: Heritage Foundation

Trump Tops Another Presidential Poll

Donald Trump is leading yet another poll for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, in what is expected to be one of the national surveys that could be used to decide who participates in the first GOP debate next week in Ohio.

Mr. Trump captured 20 percent of the vote in the Quinnipiac University poll of Republican or Republican-leaning voters nationwide, putting him well ahead of his closest competitors — Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin with 13 percent, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with 10 percent — in the crowded GOP field.

The rest of the pack is bunched together, fueling additional questions about who will be on the outside looking in for the the first Republican National Committee sponsored debate on Aug. 6, which Fox is capping at ten candidates based on an average of national polls.

Mr. Trump also led the “no way” list in the poll, with 30 percent of respondents saying they could not vote for him, followed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 15 percent, and Mr. Bush, 14 percent.

Donald Trump: 20 percent

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 13 percent

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: 10 percent

Ben Carson: 6 percent

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: 6 percent

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul: 6 percent

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: 6 percent

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: 5 percent

Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 5 percent

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 3 percent

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: 2 percent

Via: Washington Times

Conservative PAC Calls On IRS To Investigate Democratic Attorneys General Association

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington Monday June 23, 2014. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTR3VDIU

A conservative super PAC is urging the IRS to investigate the Democratic Attorneys Generals Association for failing to properly disclose its contributions and expenditures.

Because of that, the organization, known as DAGA, should be slapped with a 35 percent tax on all of its expenditures and contributions, State Conservative Reform Action PAC (SCRAP) chairman J. Chris Jankowski wrote in a letter to IRS commissioner John Koskinen and Tamera Ripperda, the director of the exempt organizations division at the tax agency.

Ripperda’s position is the same one held by Lois Lerner, the retired IRS official accused of targeting conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status.

DAGA, which is operated out of Colorado, is a political organization set up to help elect Democratic attorney general candidates. Its largest contribution last year came from the Teamsters Union, which donated $380,000.

Jankowski writes that DAGA failed to disclose its expenditures and contributions on Form 8872. Political organizations are required to file that form unless they are already exempted because they’ve filed similar information with state agencies or are registered as a federal political committee with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Jankowski formed SCRAP last year. The former head of the Republican State Leadership Committee, Jankowski’s group focuses on state-level races and generally supports low tax, small government candidates.

In his letter to Koskinen and Ripperda, Jankowski asserts that DAGA is not exempt at the state level and is not registered with the FEC and that as of July 20, it had not filed Form 8872 reports for the 2014 pre-general election period, the 2014 post-general election period, or the 2014 year-end period.

“Failure to file a required form 8872, or failure to include the information required on the form 8872, is a violation of tax law that is punishable by a tax at the highest corporate rate, currently 35 percent, on the undisclosed contributions and expenditures,” Jankowski writes.

“In light of the foregoing it is imperative that the IRS properly conduct an investigation into the serious and ongoing violations,” he adds. “The IRS should determine and impose appropriate sanctions and penalties for any and all violations, including a tax of 35 percent of the unreported expenditures and contributions.”

Via: Daily Caller

[OPINION] Carr: A soft landing again for Beverly Scott

What better place for “Dr.” Beverly Scott’s next soft landing than the National Transportation Safety Board?

The NTSB has as its mission, among other duties, the investigation of train wrecks, and who better to probe train wrecks than a train wreck like Bev Scott?

Another nationwide search, and if you dare question her qualifications, then you are immediately labeled a … well, you know.

The doctor (Ph.D. from Howard, B.A. from Fisk) once scoffed at the MBTA infrastructure as “no spring chicken,” which is an apt description of herself at age 65. But now her dear friend Barack, like her dear friend Deval before him, is taking care of Dr. Scott with a $155,000 a year sinecure for five years.

So she wedges her snout into yet another new trough and starts working on a federal pension, on top of God only knows how many others she’s already grabbing.

Eat your heart out, Olga Roche and Sherri Killins and Andrea Cabral and Ron Bell and Carl Stanley McGee and all the rest of Deval’s greedy coatholders. Bev’s died and gone to hack heaven. Not bad for an MBTA boss who, in retrospect, makes her predecessor Richard Davey look like Steve Jobs.

What would Bev call this kind of score?

“Makin’ a way outta no way,” she said last winter, when the MBTA was absolutely paralyzed by snow and the banana-republic work ethic of Deval’s appointees.

Gore Vidal once said, No talent is not enough. But for Bev, it has been. And still is, apparently.

Like her mentors Barack Obama and Deval Patrick, Beverly Scott is never held accountable for her failures, or anything else for that matter. She never pays the price. Think of her as a professional fare-jumper, with one, and only one, qualification. She’s the right demographic.

But sooner or later, usually sooner, the incompetence catches up to Bev. The optics outweigh the demographics, and it’s time to move on, just like she did from Atlanta to Boston.

We knew she was lugging a lot of baggage with her when she arrived from  Atlanta. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the bags were full of her dirty laundry, which she was planning to have cleaned at the five-star hotels she junketed to every couple of weeks, charging everything to the taxpayers of Massachusetts.

“Flyin’ like an eagle” — those are some more of Bev Scott’s words, and they aptly sum up her lackluster career.

This is a woman who doubled the number of T employees — as opposed to workers — making over $100,000 a year. Just last year, she added 213 Friends of Deval to the T payroll. She bemoaned the lack of funds to deal with blizzards, after signing off on a state capital expenditures budget of $6.2 billion that included $2.83 million for “snow-fighting equipment.”

That’s one-twentieth of one percent, for those of you keeping score at home.

But by God, she is ready for her new slot on the federal mammary.

“I’ve been through hurricanes,” she said last February, “I’ve been through World Trade Center bombings, tornadoes coming, 30 inches, 36 inches and all so this ain’t this woman’s first rodeo.”

Let’s just hope it’s her last, but I’m not optimistic. Old hacks never die, they don’t even fade away. They just go somewhere else and screw up all over again.

Listen to Howie 3-7 p.m. on AM 680 WRKO.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

Pelosi: Obama's agreement with Iran is a 'diplomatic masterpiece' (HAS SHE READ IT YET?)

House Democrats will provide the necessary support to finalize President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted Thursday.

Asked if the Democrats could sustain a promised veto of the Republicans' expected disapproval measure, Pelosi didn't hesitate.

"Yes," she replied.

Pressed about the reason she's so confident, she said: "Because of the nature of the agreement."

GOP leaders in both chambers, who have hammered the agreement as essentially an endorsement of Iran's nuclear weapons program, are expected to vote in September on legislation disapproving it — resolutions Obama has vowed to veto.

That scenario sets the stage for Republican attempts to override the veto — votes that would require Democratic support to reach the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

A number of liberal Democrats, such as Pelosi, have come out in strong support of the agreement, saying it presents the best opportunity for the U.S. and its allies to prevent Iran from building nuclear arms.

"There is simply no acceptable alternative to this deal," Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) wrote this week in an op-ed in The Hill.

A handful of others have already announced their opposition, warning that the deal simply doesn't go far enough to ensure that Iran doesn't build weapons or use the influx of cash from sanctions relief to fund terrorism abroad.

"[T]he deal before us now is simply too dangerous for the American people," Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday in a statement. "I have every confidence a better deal can be realized."

Most House Democrats have not played their hand, saying they want to use the 60-day window to talk to experts and constituents about the agreement.

Pelosi on Thursday hailed Obama for keeping the global negotiators at the table, characterizing the deal as "a diplomatic masterpiece." She said House Democrats are lining up behind the deal in numbers sufficient to uphold a veto of the expected Republican effort to sink the deal.

"So where does my confidence spring from? First of all, from the quality of the agreement. Second of all, to the seriousness and thoughtfulness with which my colleagues have approached this," Pelosi said.

Via: The Hill

[VIDEO] BALTIMORE: Defense Accuses Marilyn Mosby of Withholding Evidence in Freddie Grey Case

The legal team representing the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray have accused State Attorney Marilyn Mosby of withholding evidence they believe can aid their case.

In particular, they allege that Mosby has evidence that Gray tried to injure himself during a previous arrest. “Based upon information and belief, the State’s Attorney’s Office was informed of this fact, yet failed to disclose to the Defendants any statements, reports, or other communications relating to this information,” they write.

They also accuse Mosby of withholding “multiple witness statements from individuals who stated that Mr. Gray was banging and shaking the van at various points” and “police reports, court records, and witness statements indicating that on prior occasions, Mr. Gray had fled from police and attempted to discard drugs.”

If true, the evidence could be crucial in the police officers’ defense. One report early in the investigation into Gray’s death indicated that he was trying to injure himself in the police van, a report that another prisoner in the van has disputed.

Via: Mediaite

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