Saturday, January 31, 2009

Another Tax Cheat in the Administration

President Barack Obama picked former Senator Tom Daschle to lead his health reform efforts. How interesting that just before the announcement Mr. Daschle filed amended tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 and paid $140,167 in additional taxes and interest. This resulted from unreported consulting income of $88,333, overstated charitable contributions of $15,000 and unreported income from the use of a car service in the amount of $250,000 from a close friend and business associate.
Way to pack the administration with thieves, Mr. President.

Politics As Usual

President Barack Obama issued new rules on January 22, 2009 which forbid a lobbyist who joins his administration from working on issues they were previously involved with.
The next day he appointed William Lynn, a 55-year-old senior vice president and lobbyist of the fourth largest US defense contractor, Raytheon, to be a Deputy Secretary of Defense. Mr. Lynn will be very familiar with the halls of the Pentagon where he will switch from being an influence peddler to a peddled official.
Way to go with the hypocrisy, Mr. President.

Friday, January 23, 2009

It's time to pray for global warming

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"
To read the entire story, go here:
http://blog.mlive.com/flintopinion_impact/2009/01/its_time_to_pray_for_global_wa/print.html

Geithner Nomination Moves Out of Committee for Full Senate Vote

Your US Senate is about to confirm Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary. The Treasury secretary is the IRS Commissioner's boss. Mr. Geithner has apologized to the Senate finance committee for his failure to pay self employment tax for calendar years 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. If you read the Senate finance committee's report (first 4 pages) and you are a tax professional like me, you cannot but draw the conclusion that Mr. Geithner knew about his obligation to pay self employment taxes. Here is the document:
http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2009press/prb011309d.pdf
What is self employment tax? It is both halves of the Social Security and Medicare payroll tax that employees pay. If you are self employed, you get to pay the employee half and the employer half for a total of 15.2% of net self employment earnings.
Do you really want the cabinet level post that heads up the IRS to be a tax cheat? Should a person with his professional stature really be doing his own taxes? I think that this shows an irresponsible character flaw. If you believe as I do, write to your Senators and ask them to vote against his confirmation.
http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

More on Executive Orders

You might have already seen or heard the news conference that the President held for the signing of the executive orders. If not, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGEyODB3tks
In the video you can see the President hemming and hawing and actually asking a White house consul questions on how things are going to be implemented. At one point, if you listen carefully, you can hear the President repeating the words verbatim from this White House lawyer. This clearly shows the President's lack of experience. If President Bush had been repeating the words of some advisor in a news conference, the main stream media would have been all over it. Does this President get a by because his is black, a liberal, or inexperienced? You choose.
Now, it is one thing to make fun of a politician for his lack of preparation and eloquence, but image what this image looks like in the international arena. This is very embarrassing at the least to the world image of the United States.

It Begins

The liberalization of the United States has begun as promised by Mr. Obama.
In a sweeping move, your new President has signed an executive order requiring the CIA to adopt and use the Army Field Manual on Interrogation for all terrorists interrogations anywhere in the world. Those familiar with the AFMI claim that under this executive order your local police can use more severe interrogation techniques on you than the CIA can use on terrorists in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the AFMI is a public domain document that is freely available to the terrorists so that they can train themselves in counter-interrogation techniques.
Here is the AFMI: http://www.army.mil/institution/armypublicaffairs/pdf/fm2-22-3.pdf
Playing nice to bad people and rouge states is a hallmark of liberals. They think that negotiating with terrorist, dictators and perpetrators of genocide will bring peace and tranquility to the world. For the classic example of this, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time
It is my opinion that you should all start to practice prudence in public places, including air travel. I believe that our safety will soon begin to be compromised by the liberal agenda. Did you know that about 60 detainees released from Gitmo have returned to terrorists activities? The head of al-Qaida in Yemen is a former Gitmo detainee. Under your new President it is likely that many of the remaining detainees will be placed into prisons in the United States - prisons where their colleagues living freely among you (because our boarders are not secure) will be able to take hostages in exchange for release of the detainees or drive fuel laden trucks into the gates of such prisons. Oh, and these enemy combatants (prisoners of war) will be given the benefit of civil and criminal justice rather than military justice.
Is this what you intended when you voted for Obama?