Blog

10/01/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

The Lobbyist Whores Are Selling Us Out Again

imagesCAMMMXFT — Our Leaders are from Babylon

Google Joins Apple in Push for Tax Holiday

By Richard Rubin and Jesse Drucker – Sep 28, 2011 11:01 PM CT

As a coalition led by Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) presses for a tax holiday on more than $1 trillion in offshore profits, it is turning to a well-positioned lobbyist: Jeffrey Forbes, once chief of staff to Max Baucus, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

Data compiled by Bloomberg News show that Forbes is part of an army of more than 160 lobbyists, including at least 60 who once worked for a sitting member of the House or Senate, pushing for the repatriation holiday. Their job is to persuade Congress to establish a tax break estimated to cost theU.S.government $78.7 billion over the next decade.

Independent studies have found that the last time this tax break was tried, in 2004, the bargain rate for bringing home offshore profits did little to spur hiring or domestic investment. Most of the money was used to buy back stock.

“This is an issue that involves a whole lot of people hired by corporations that are pushing for those corporate interests rather than the public interest,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at AmericanUniversityin Washington.

Though the studies found that money brought home in 2004 ended up benefiting a narrow set of shareholders, support is growing in Congress for the tax holiday as companies expand their roster of lobbyists. One case they are making is that the potential flood of cash will boost the falteringU.S.economy.

Complex Issues

“There are many issues that are very important but are complex and don’t seem of great importance to the wider public – – those are the issues primed for having people who formerly worked on the Hill or executive branch intervening in making policy,” Thurber said.

Those with Capitol Hill connections who are lobbying for the repatriation tax break include former Louisiana Representative Jim McCrery, who until 2009 was the top Republican on the U.S. House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee; Dena Battle, the former legislative director for that committee’s current chairman, Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican; and at least four former staffers for House Speaker John Boehner.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said former staff members don’t influence policy. “The speaker makes such decisions based on what is best for his constituents and the American people,” Steel said.

‘Regenerate the Economy’

Advocates for the break say a repatriation holiday would bring more than $1 trillion to theU.S.now held overseas.

“It would do much to regenerate the economy,” said Robert Livingston, a former Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and speaker-designate who is now lobbying for Oracle Corp. (ORCL) “A total of $1.5 trillion from all affected U.S. companies would go a long way to pull us out of the doldrums.”

There are more insiders pushing for the tax holiday than those in Bloomberg News’ tally of at least 60. That figure includes only registered lobbyists who worked for a sitting member of Congress and disclosed lobbying on the issue for the WIN America Campaign, the group of companies seeking the break, or for one of the companies or associations in the coalition.

WIN America is coordinated by SKDKnickerbocker, a Washington political consulting and public relations firm, which includes as a managing director Anita Dunn, former communications director for President Barack Obama. Dunn isn’t a registered lobbyist.

Longtime Fixtures

The list of more than 160 lobbyists includes other longtime fixtures in Washington, such as former Representative Livingston; Democratic fundraiser Tony Podesta; and Kenneth Kies, former chief of staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The proposed break has gained momentum in recent months, with several prominent Democrats, including Senator Charles Schumer of New York, expressing a willingness to consider the tax holiday. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, a House member from Minnesota, and Texas Governor Rick Perry have called on Congress to let companies bring home offshore earnings at a reduced tax rate.

The Obama administration has said it is opposed to a stand- alone tax holiday for repatriated profits, pointing to the 2004 experience. Obama has been taking aim at tax breaks benefiting certain industries, such as oil and gas, and deductions and exclusions claimed by millionaires. He has embraced changes suggested by billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

U.S.multinational companies have amassed more than $1.375 trillion in profits overseas on which they have paid no federal income tax, according to a recent report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) When the earnings are returned to theU.S. — or repatriated — they are taxed at the top corporate rate of 35 percent, with credits for foreign income taxes paid.

Reprising 2004Holiday

The companies are pushing to reprise the 2004 holiday that allowed them to bring home offshore earnings at a low tax rate of 5.25 percent. Under that break, companies repatriated to the U.S. $312 billion, largely for stock repurchases rather than direct hiring or investment, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Finance, the latest in a series of studies that reached similar conclusions.

The proposed holiday would reward the companies that have most aggressively parked profits in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands andSwitzerland, said Martin A. Sullivan, a former Treasury Department economist and contributing editor for the non-partisan Tax Notes.

“A lot of what companies report as foreign profit is reallyU.S.profit that should be subject toU.S.tax,” Sullivan said. “Those earnings didn’t get overseas by accident. Many of these companies intentionally put them there to avoid payingU.S.taxes.”

Tally of Lobbyists

Bloomberg’s tally covers individuals who were registered to lobby on the repatriation issue at some point in the first half of this year, the period for which records are available. Some of the lobbyists have since left their firms. The figures don’t include those who were listed as lobbying on general tax issues for companies in the WINAmericacoalition, except where the lobbyists confirmed to Bloomberg News that they were working on repatriation.

Newer members of the revolving-door community are involved, such as Danielle Maurer, a lobbyist at the Republican firm of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock. It has been paid $160,000 so far this year by Oracle to lobby on a variety of tax issues, and the Win America coalition recently hired the firm. Maurer had been director of member services for Boehner, helping assign House members to committees.

Baucus Alumni

In all, three former staffers of Baucus, the Finance Committee’s chairman since 2007, are lobbying on the repatriation holiday. Besides Forbes, there’s Nick Giordano of Washington Council Ernst & Young, a longtime Cisco lobbyist. Microsoft has retained Timothy E. Punke, a former adviser to Baucus on trade issues who is active in Democratic politics.

The WIN Americacampaign’s manager is Karen Olick, former chief of staff to Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. One of the spokesmen for the group is Doug Thornell, who most recently was a staffer for Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who is a member of the House leadership. Like Anita Dunn, Thornell and Olick aren’t registered lobbyists.

“Our economy needs all the help it can get, and leaving this money in foreign banks when we could bring it home now makes no sense,” Thornell said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Rubin in Washingtonat rrubin12@bloomberg.net; Jesse Drucker in New York at jdrucker4@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at Msilva34@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/google-joins-apple-mobilizing-lobbyists-to-push-for-tax-holiday-on-profits.html /

09/30/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Obama and Is People Wanted A Convicted Murder Off Death Row

Don’t Mess WithTexas (Common Sense Has Left Us)

Stop The Jack Asses — Texas Got It Right

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a Mexican man’s request for an execution stay inTexas, calling his argument meritless.

Humberto Leal, 38, a Mexican national and convicted murder, has since been moved to a holding cell a few steps away from the Texas death chamber, an indicator that he is hours away from the lethal injection cocktail.

He is set to die for the 1994 brutal rape and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, of San Antonio.

President Obama, the State Department and Mexican authorities have all asked Texas for a last-minute reprieve, citing the U.N.-enforced 1963 Vienna Treaty, which requires foreign nationals who are arrested in foreign countries the right to access their consulates.

The White House asked for a stay in the case that has pitted Texas justice against international treaty rights.

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said, “We have no authority to stay an execution in light of an “appeal of the President,” presenting free-ranging assertions of foreign policy consequences, when those assertions come unaccompanied by a persuasive legal claim.”

An hour before the 6 p.m. scheduled execution, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has yet to make a decision regarding whether to stay the execution, a spokeswoman said.

Leal, who moved with his family from Mexico to the U.S. as a toddler, contends police never told him he could seek legal assistance from the Mexican government under the treaty — and that such assistance would have helped his defense.

Sauceda, his victim, was found naked by authorities, according to court documents.

“There was a 30- to 40-pound asphalt rock roughly twice the size of the victim’s skull lying partially on the victim’s left arm,” court documents read. “Blood was underneath this rock. A smaller rock with blood on it was located near the victim’s right thigh.”

A “bloody and broken” stick roughly 15 inches long with a screw at the end of it was also protruding from the girl’s vagina, according to the documents.

Prosecutors said Sauceda was drunk and high on cocaine the night she was killed, and that Leal offered to take her home. Witnesses said Leal drove off with her around 5 a.m. Some partygoers found her brutalized nude body later that morning and called police.

A witness testified that Leal’s brother appeared at the party, agitated that Leal had arrived home bloody and saying he had killed a girl.

In his first statement to police, Leal said Sauceda bolted from his car and ran off. After he was told his brother had given detectives a statement, he changed his story, saying Sauceda attacked him and fell to the ground after he fought back. He said when he couldn’t wake her and saw bubbles in her nose, he got scared and went home.

Leal’s supporters say he was never given the option to seek legal assistance from the Mexican government. Although evidence against Leal was strong, supporters say he incriminated himself and had other legal difficulties.

“If Texas were to proceed with the scheduled execution of Mr. Leal … there could be no dispute that that execution would be unlawful,” Sandra Babcock, a Northwestern University law professor who is one of Leal’s attorneys, said last week in her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last Friday, the Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Texas from executing Leal, asking the court to delay the execution for up to six months to give Congress time to consider legislation that would enforce the U.N. treaty.

Congress had three years to pass the bill but did not. Hence, it is impossible to pass a bill that would spare Leal unless a stay is ordered. A 30-day stay granted by Perry is another potential way for Leal to avoid execution on Thursday.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said if Texas disregards the treaty, it may have consequences for American citizens arrested abroad.

But the state of Texas appears to bristle at the idea of a foreign body affecting judgments in the state, even though President George W. Bush endorsed the U.N. ruling.

“Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” Katherine Cesinger, press secretary for Gov. Perry’s office, said in a statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the treaty was not binding on the states and that the president does not have the authority to order states to review cases of the then 51 foreign nationals on death row in the U.S.”

For 16 years, Leal has exercised his right to file appeals and motions so extensively, one judge in federal district court called his case “one of the most procedurally convoluted and complex habeas corpus proceedings” he ever reviewed.

As it stands, the death warrant could be served any time after 6 p.m. Thursday. Leal will be allowed to address the media, meet family and friends and eat his last meal: fried chicken, pico de Gallo and guisada tacos.

Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Adria’s father, Rene Sauceda, reportedly begins each morning by reading a South San Antonio High School newspaper clipping from May 25, 1995 — just after the first anniversary of his daughter’s death.

“I look at that every day,” Sauceda, 64, told the San Antonio Express-News. “Her friends paid to have that put in the newspaper. She had so many friends.”

Sauceda’s mother, Rachel Terry, told San Antonio television station KSAT her family already had suffered too long.

“A technicality doesn’t give anyone a right to come to this country and rape, torture and murder anyone,” she said.

09/30/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

LIBERALS AREN'T FUNNY, THEY'RE A RIOT!

August 17, 2011

Like you, I’ve been horrified by the eruptions of mob violence around the globe this summer. But having spent the last two years researching and writing a book about mobs, I’m also grateful to the ruffians for taking to the streets so soon after my book was released.

Thanks, you dirty animals. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.

When I decided to write about mobs, it was a relatively peaceful period. But as long as there is evil in the world, mobs will never be finally defeated. And as long as there are liberals, there will be some people stoking the mobs.

It was only a matter of time, although even I didn’t expect it quite this soon.

Mobs are always the same — destructive, left-wing and without any clear cause. Why were young people in Britain tearing apart their cities, burning down businesses and stealing electronics and designer clothes? Because the cops shot someone? Please.

What has gotten on the last nerve of rioters in Greece, Paris and Vancouver? They’re jobless? Their government benefits have been cut? Their hockey team lost? They might as well destroy police cars because they’re upset about rainy days. (That’s not a suggestion, by the way — more of a rhetorical flourish.)

Why were public sector union workers in Wisconsin busting up the capitol and physically attacking Republican legislators? MSNBC’s Ed Schultz says it was because Republicans were trying to take away the people’s “civil rights.”

(Evidently, research showed the last seven people actually watching MSNBC were Wisconsin public school teachers.)

You have to do some digging to find out the public sector employees were upset that Republicans wanted government unions to engage in collective bargaining only over salary, but not work conditions or benefits — all funded by the taxpayers.

Why were black and Hispanic gang members looting after the Rodney King verdict? As if you needed to know, a Los Angeles policeman recently told me that the gang members he arrested in the riots said they didn’t know or care about Rodney King.

Why were masked hoodlums smashing Starbucks windows in Seattle a decade ago when some bankers came to town? They’re against the “global economy”? What does that even mean?

Like Satan, mobs are good only for destruction and chaos. The putative “cause” is always incidental. As Jesus said, “They hated me without a cause.”

The French Revolution is the template for all mob uprisings, and the signal event of that lunacy was an attack on a prison housing only half a dozen prisoners.

As best anyone can tell, the storming of the Bastille was instigated by a rumor that the laughably impotent King Louis XVI was about to stage an attack on the National Assembly. Or perhaps they were upset that the inept finance minister, Jacques Necker, had been fired. Or they thought the Bastille was an eyesore.

(The only other possible cause was recently ruled out when it was conclusively determined that France had no teachers unions in the late 18th century.)

No one is sure — but a good time was had by all! Except the prison administrators murdered in the attack.

Liberals love mobs because rioting and anarchy is their path to power.

Making sound proposals based on facts and logic is not their metier. Issuing impossible promises to the easily fooled is their specialty. For more on this, see “The 2012 Democratic Platform.”

The entire Democratic Party is currently promising to “save” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in their present form. According to Obama’s own Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, in less than 10 years, spending on those three entitlement programs, plus servicing the national debt, will consume 92 cents of every dollar in the federal budget.

The Democrats are openly lying to voters. It is a mathematical impossibility for these programs to continue without major reform now, or complete bankruptcy later — and not very much later.

But Democrats’ real achievement has been in destroying the family, and thereby creating an endless supply of potential rioters.

When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them! Barely two generations since LBJ’s Great Society programs began, the black illegitimacy rate has tripled to 72 percent.

Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has septupled, from 4 percent to 29 percent.

Instead of a “War on Poverty,” it should have been called a “War on the Family.”

The vast and permanent underclass created by the welfare state is a great success story for the Democratic Party, which now has a loyal constituency of deadbeats who automatically vote for the Democrats to keep their Trojan horse “benefits” flowing.

It’s the Democrats’ “heroin dealer” model of government.

Apparently, it takes a lot of government workers to minister to the poor, inasmuch as government employment has skyrocketed in tandem with the family’s disintegration. As long as Democrats are serving their principal constituency — recipients of taxpayer money — they don’t care what happens to the rest of society.

They champion any mob that will increase their political power. Liberals promote welfare dependency, class warfare, endless government programs staffed with public sector workers, street protests, coddling criminals and physical attacks on their ideological opponents. This is how they create reliable Democratic voters.

True, government employees are doing jobs we don’t want done, can never be fired, are bankrupting the country and periodically break out in mob violence.

True, also, that the children of broken families sometimes burn city blocks to the ground or kill their great-grandmothers with swords. But what a voting bloc!

What Ever Happen To Common Sense

09/29/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Teacher penalizes students for saying "bless you"

(What Ever Happen To Common Sense)

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A NorthernCaliforniateacher says he doesn’t want to hear a common courtesy in his classroom.

He’s even lowering students’ grades if they say “bless you” after someone sneezes.

Steve Cuckovich says the practice is disrespectful and disruptive. He’s banned saying “bless you” in his high school health class inVacaville.

He even knocked 25 points from one student’s grade for saying the phrase in class.

Cuckovich says the policy has nothing to do with religion, but says the phrase is just a outdated practice and disrupts class time.

“When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body,” Cuckovich said. “So they were saying, ‘god bless you’ for getting rid of evil spirits. But today, I said what you’re doing doesn’t really make any sense anymore.”

After parents complained about students losing points for saying “bless you”, Cuckovich says he decided to stop the practice.

However, the teacher says he will just find another way to discipline students for saying “bless you” in class.

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/state&id=8372183

What would he do if you say “Darwin Lives” when someone sneezes would he have the same actions?

09/29/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Morgan Freeman Is a Pervert, Who Calls the Tea-party Racist

(What Ever Happen To Common Sense)

By: Elmer Williams

In a interview Morgan Freeman said that “I can tell you that it’s clear from the evidence that the, ‘To heck with the interests of the common good, whatever we need to do to derail this presidency,’ has characterized some if not all Tea Party behavior in the United States”.
This is a quote from the Fox.news website.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/29/morgan-freeman-receives-invite-to-tea-party-after-calls-movement-racist/#ixzz1ZNkU8w6A/

A young black man writes an open letter to Mr. Freeman, inviting him to a Tea-Party rally. He is dreaming if he believes this narrow minded liberal actor will attend a Tea-Party rally. How could he tell his friends that his beliefs have been wrong if he learns the truth? They say that ignorance is bliss but this only applies when it is convenient to these feeble minded people. They are only rational when it suits their agenda.

He is dating his Step-Granddaughter but he wants to start lecturing us on race when he is nothing more than a Pervert. I have always found it quite funny how these people never back up their claims with facts. He says in his statement that “it’s clear from the evidence that the, To heck with the interests of the common good”.
http://www.hollyscoop.com/morgan-freeman/morgan-freeman-to-marry-step-granddaughter.html/
I don’t even know what the hell that means, because he did not finish the sentence. Clear from what evidence you moron! You did not give us any evidence to back up your claim, and what is the “common good” that he is speaking about. People don’t dislike Obama because he is black; no they dislike him because of his policies that are ruining the country.
What ever happen to an open administration that he promised? When he passed the ObamaCare was that being open with the American people. How about all the dam bailouts for your buddies, was this being open to the people.

See this is why the dam Actors and Singers should just, shut up, and act, and sing. How anyone takes these people serious is beyond me. The next time you want to make a statement like this Mr. Freeman could you at least get one fact before making a statement? I know common sense has long left us in America but I am hoping she will return.

09/29/2011 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Humility! “The Hypocrisy of Our Time”

By: Elmer Williams

If I hear another person declare to me how they love a humble person I’m going to scream. Personally I love humble people also, but the problem comes in when people began to say they don’t like this person because they are not humble enough.

The person that is calling for humility out of some Superstar Athlete, Entertainer, or Actor is only deceiving themselves. About .000000009 persons who are millionaires are humble. I know your favorite star is different from the rest. You say “I just love how humble he or she is”. However if the truth be told they are not humble.

I hear News Anchors, Sports Announcers, and So-Called Journalist espousing the humility of some certain high profile individuals. Have you noticed that when ever a Politician or Superstar gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar? One of the first things that one of these so-called reporters will say is if he was just humble I could forgive him.

Most of the rich who has handlers know that the American people are naïve so they tell their clients to come out with an apology. Never mind that they do not mean a damm word of what they are saying. Most dumb smucks eat this up. They say that “he seems to be contrite”. How in the hell can you tell, did he cry 124 tears, or did he look down from the cameras when he was speaking.

This is utter rubbish and complete nonsense. I work with people and I talk with people who are always talking about humility. However I have noticed that these Bastards are some of the most egotistical people that I have ever met. They want some millionaire to be humble and they are broke and not humble.

Can some one say “What Ever Happen To Common Sense” please? I miss this lady Ms. Common Sense because she really has intrinsic value when you love her and welcome her into your life.

http://www.whateverhappentocommonsense.com/

Blog

Footer