The day’s top political news:
Senator Ensign receives handwritten confirmation of Obamacare penalty and tax
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."
When is a tax not a tax? When liberals are desperate to lie out of reality. Obama care will impose additional taxation on all Americans – violating another campaign pledge by Obama.
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Ensign_receives_handwritten_confirmation_.html?showall
Financial pledges hold steady at Clinton summit
Financial pledges to the Clinton Global Initiative held steady this year compared with 2008 in spite of the recession, Bill Clinton, former US president, said on Friday.
Mr Clinton’s annual philanthropic conference drew 282 commitments worth “more than $8bn” this year, he said at the conclusion of the conference. Last year CGI drew 250 commitments valued at $8bn.
The commitments include moves to battle hunger, improve roads, fight human trafficking and broaden access to education. Members of the CGI, who must pay $20,000 annually to be part of the group, are required to fulfill their commitments to retain membership.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/263afec4-aa15-11de-a3ce-00144feabdc0.html
Podesta Says Value-Added Tax ‘More Plausible’ as Deficits Grow
Far left operative and former Clinton White House aide, John Podesta, compares the nation’s current budget crisis to that Clinton faced in 1993. Podesta says some form of a value-added tax is “more plausible today than it ever has been.” Of course left wing Democrats love taxing other people.
A so-called consumption tax would “create a balance” with European and Japanese economies and “could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness,” said Podesta. Value- added taxes in Europe and Japan encourage savings by taxing consumption.
Podesta said such a tax may be regressive, but can be balanced by exempting some products and using “the money to support low-wage workers.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGxdXdfWrZ7o
Opinion:
No matter how much the White House opposes the idea, it’s time to make certain all Americans know the truth about the Obama scheme against health care
Incredibly, the Obama government has clamped down on Humana to prevent the health care giant from sharing the truth about Obama’s health scheme with their customers.
Whatever happened to the First Amendment?
Humana has an obligation to inform its patients. The fact that such “truths” run afoul of the party line from the White House makes no difference. The act is an admission by Obama that his ideas and plans regarding health care cant stand or survive the harsh light of truth or fact.
Nothing new about that news, of course.
In a conference call with conservative Americans on Thursday, Congressman Tom Price of Georgia, himself a physician, laid out current reality regarding Democrat efforts to eventually impose socialized medicine on Americans.
Price reports on pending health care legislation from Democrats:
• The House is disconcertingly quiet publicly but is hashing it out behind closed doors. Speaker of the House Pelosi doesn’t care about bi-partisanship. They would pass the bill with no Republican support.
• Olympia Snowe is one Republican Senator they are targeting. Her support is enough for them to declare their “bipartisanship.”
• Senator Baucus is deceptively saying that he will not allow the bill to move forward without at least one insurance policy allowing abortion. The truth is there are several that will allow it.
• They have accepted some conscience language but it’s taken a hard fight to get it.
• Two Debbie Stabenow amendments expand eligibility for family planning coverage under Medicaid (which is abortion planning) and establish school-based health centers, which is an attempt for more government control.
Should any normal American wonder about who is telling the truth about Obama’s health scheme – its necessary to just consider what Democrats are doing to impose it.
Not just avoiding First Amendment rights of Humana and others – but threatening to move without regard to any vestige of honest democracy.
Senate Democrat Leader, Harry Reid, mumbles threats that he will bring Obama’s plan before the Senate and achieve passage no matter what Republicans (or a growing majority of Americans) want or agree to. Reid intends to pass the socialized medicine bill through by using the dominating majority Democrats have in the Senate.
Pelosi has the same dominating numbers in the House.
Nothing could make it clearer that ALL Americans need to do all that can be done to defeat Democrats next November. The dominating majorities must be brought down.
Noting could be clearer.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.tothepointnews.com/
MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMP
Jack Kelly
Last March, President Obama fired the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, replaced him with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and announced "a comprehensive new strategy."
"So it was a little startling to hear Mr. Obama suggest in several televised interviews Sunday (9/20) that he had second thoughts," the Washington Post said in an editorial Tuesday (9/22).
"Until I'm satisfied we've got the right strategy, I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there," the president told NBC's David Gregory.
Mr. Obama is waffling on Gen. McChrystal's urgent request for more troops because Democrats worry that if he provides them, Mr. Obama may meet the fate of Lyndon Johnson, whose ambitious domestic agenda was overshadowed by the war in Vietnam.
But it's a more recent president Barack Hussein Obama more closely resembles.
On March 14, 1980, Kirk Scharfenberg of the Boston Globe wrote a mock headline over an editorial the Globe was planning to run on a speech President Jimmy Carter had made, planning to replace it with a serious headline before publication.
To Mr. Scharfenberg's horror, the mock headline was inadvertently printed in 161,000 copies. The headline was: "More Mush from the Wimp."
The headline resonated with millions of Americans because of Mr. Carter's perceived weakness on foreign policy. Iranian militants were holding Americans hostage in our embassy in Tehran, and Mr. Carter didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. He said he was surprised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he didn't seem to be able to do anything about that, either.
The Carter administration, Henry Kissinger said, had achieved at one and the same time "the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War."
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said in a radio interview last week Jimmy Carter was the worst president in the 20th Century, perhaps ever. That may soon no longer be true.
(NOTE: If John McCain makes that observation, it should be duly noted. McCain went overboard during his campaign to avoid saying nasty things about Obama. He even attacked some of his own people for daring to mention Obama’s middle name is Hussein.)
The hallmarks of the Obama foreign policy have been craven -- and thus far futile -- efforts to appease America's enemies, and callous treatment of our allies.
The most recent outrage was the administration's unilateral abrogation of treaties with Poland and the Czech Republic to put anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) and radars in their countries. The announcement of the capitulation to Russian demands came, with bitter irony for the Poles, on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland.
The ABMs were no threat to Russia. They were to guard Europe against the threat of nuclear blackmail from Iran. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin railed against them in part because he needs an external enemy to divert Russian attention from deplorable economic conditions at home, in part because he has dreams of reabsorbing Eastern Europe into a new Russian empire.
"The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," said the Polish newspaper Fakt in a front page editorial.
"An ally we rely on has betrayed us, and has exchanged us for its own, better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid," said the Czech newspaper Hospodarske Novine.
President Obama received exactly nothing for selling out America's friends in Eastern Europe. Russia continues to oppose sanctions on the mullahs in Iran, and continues to sell advanced weapons to them.
Nothing is also what the administration received from North Korea for agreeing to North Korea's demand to scuttle the six party talks on North Korea's nuclear program in favor of the direct talks the Norks have long sought.
The hostile tone the Obama administration has taken toward Israel has not made the Palestinians or the Saudis more willing to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Peace in that region remains as chimerical as ever.
"Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and carry on as before," wrote Edward Lucas in the London Telegraph Monday (9/21). "The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter."
In Afghanistan and elsewhere, we need decisive leadership. But all we get is more mush from the wimp.
Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
2.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/25/top-republican-pulls-out-intelligence-in/
EXCLUSIVE: Top Republican pulls out of intelligence investigation
Kara Rowland
EXCLUSIVE:
The top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee has pulled out of the panel's bipartisan review of Bush-era terrorist interrogation techniques, saying Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s criminal investigation into the CIA undermines the committee's ability to interview witnesses.
"Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the president to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the committee's review," said Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the panel's vice chairman. "Instead, DOJ sent a loud and clear message that previous decisions to decline prosecution mean nothing and old criminal charges can be brought anytime against anyone — against these odds, what current or former CIA employee would be willing to gamble his freedom by answering the committee's questions?"
Since March, Mr. Bond had been working with Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, on the committee's review of U.S. detention and interrogation practices, including controversial techniques such as waterboarding. They have said their investigation was designed to figure out the policies, not to punish interrogators.
But Mr. Holder last month appointed a prosecutor to look into whether interrogators broke the law — and Mr. Bond said that put interrogators in an impossible position. Mrs. Feinstein said she regrets the decision by Mr. Bond to withdraw from the investigation.
"However, that study and investigation is being pursued, additional staff are being hired, and the committee is continuing to work with all due diligence," she said. The investigation was expected to last about a year
3.
CONGRESSMAN SPENCER BACHUS, COLLEAGUES REQUEST INFORMATION ON ACORN FUNDING
WASHINGTON – House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a letter today to financial institutions requesting full and complete disclosure of funds provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and any of its subsidiaries and affiliates, including ACORN Housing Corporation.
“Support for ACORN is not limited to the federal government,” Reps. Bachus, Issa and Smith noted in the letter. “Corporations provide a significant source of ACORN’s operating budget.”
After new evidence surfaced linking ACORN to possible criminal activity, House Republicans undertook a series of steps designed to protect taxpayers, and to spotlight the role of corporations, including those that receive taxpayer support, in funding ACORN’s operations.
“In addition to corporate contributions to ACORN, many companies have partnered with ACORN on numerous programmatic projects including Low-Income Housing Tax Credit transactions, affordable housing development and ACORN’s mortgage brokerage firm, Acorn Housing Affordable Loans, LLC,” Reps. Bachus, Issa and Smith wrote. “In an effort to promote transparency, accountability and proper oversight by Congress, and in conjunction with the Oversight Committee’s ongoing investigation, we request that your corporation provide the Committee on Financial Services with a complete accounting, by October 15, 2009, of all financial arrangements that your company and its foundation have with ACORN and its subsidiaries and affiliates.”
The letter calls on the institutions to disclose any settlements and other forms of contracts with ACORN, the amount of funds the company or its Foundation has given to ACORN over the last 15 years, the amount of any funds to ACORN originating from TARP funds, the names of individuals who make executive decisions regarding corporate and foundation contributions to non-profit organizations, and plans to continue providing funds to ACORN.
4.
Democrats Refuse to Allow Vote on Measure to Save $84 Billion
Washington, D.C. – Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement after Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in charge refused to allow Republicans to offer an amendment authored by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to save taxpayers billions of dollars. Because Speaker Pelosi chose to fold the continuing resolution to extend government funding for an additional month into unrelated legislation, Republicans were not allowed to offer an amendment that would save $84 billion over an entire fiscal year by setting funding at the fiscal year 2008 level.
“Republicans drafted a positive alternative solution to this continuing resolution that would save taxpayers $84 billion,” said Chairman Price. “True to form, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in power would not allow it to be voted on by the full House of Representatives. Are they worried some of their members might actually believe that saving $84 billion is a good idea? Our nation is on the brink of bankruptcy, yet Democrats in charge continue to spend with reckless abandon. It speaks volumes that those in charge won’t even allow a vote on our cost-saving amendment.
“This is just another example of the Democrat lack of leadership pretending that Republican solutions don’t exist. Perhaps they don’t believe the problems caused by running up $11.8 trillion in debt can be solved by spending less money. Their refusal to allow a vote on an amendment that saves $84 billion proves once again that they have no plan to deal with their skyrocketing deficits. This is a reckless decision.”
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