Conservative Donnybrook

President Obama and his State Department reacted to the news of the imminent release of convicted Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi by the Scottish Justice Ministry with peaked annoyance. The terrorist was welcomed to Libya (by cheering hordes waving Scottish flags) after being released on humanitarian grounds due to prostate cancer. President Obama had expressed mild dismay to Scotland, and made clear his studied, brusque invitation to the Libyan government not to allow any hullabaloo or hi-jinks escalate to the point where they would be too tired for school in the morning. State Department officials reiterated the Administration line, stating that “this may affect our future relationship.” It is unclear whether the United States will now rescind its invitation to Libya to attend the upcoming homecoming cotillion. The President indicated that his feelings had been hurt and, although he admired the bouquet and the perfumed card sent by Ghadafi, it may be some time before he texts back. “Only time will tell if he really means it or if these are just sweet-nothings,” said the sullen Obama. A highly-placed source inside the White House (who had recently been visiting to attend to the First Family’s spiritual needs) said that President Obama was overheard taking a page out of Ward Cleaver’s playbook, saying “I mean it, Michelle. They need a consequence, and I think grounding and possibly even a couple-thousand barrel reduction in their annual oil sales to us might just teach them that lesson.” The Scottish Justice Minister, sporting an unexplained black eye and constantly shooting glances over the old shoulder, maintained that theirs was a true love and that Libya was a good provider.

On the way home, the news on the radio was that Bill Clinton had gone to North Korea and paid a surprise visit on Kim Jong Il. The result was that two American journalists were to be released. It seems they will be flying home with the former president.

It seems, no matter where this guy goes, he picks up chics!

Remember when the United States used to stand for democracy and the rule of law?  Those were the days!  The United States used to support smaller democratic states going as far as to help craft constitutions, federal laws, judicial systems and legislatures.  Not any more.  Now the U.S. has signaled that we stand for left-wing tyrannts, socialist dictators and the rise to power through illegal means.  Constitutions, courts and legislatures be damned.  Now we stand with Fidel, Hugo, Evo and Rafael in supporting those that would disregard a democratic constitution, government and the rule of law.  Now Obama will have the United States return to supporting dictators in Latin America.  Now we support Zelaya and his clearly illegal and undemocratic methods.

The United States must end the cycle of supporting tyrants in Latin America.  Zelaya is/was a socialist and a dictator in the making.  This was no coup, the military in Honduras arrested the president after he illegally solicited assistance from the dictator Chavez to illegally hold a referendum which would have allowed him to run for election indefinitely.  Furthermore, the military arrested Zelaya upon request from the Honduran Supreme Court after its judgement was dismissed by the would-be dictator Zelaya.  Zelaya actively attacked a military installation with leftist supporters.  His goal was to distribute illegal ballots in an attempt to forever control the nation.  Only the legislature can call for a constitutional referendum. 

So, the legislature condemned Zelaya, the Supreme Court condemned him and the military defended democracy and the rule of law by abiding by the constitution and the wishes of the other two branches of government by arresting the hack. 

And Obama calls for a return of the socialist would-be dictator in defiance of democracy and the rule of law.  Mr. Obama, one’s character can be determined by the company he keeps.  Fidel and the mini-communists in this hemisphere are not good company.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 328-93 to impose a 90% tax on recipients of bonuses from taxpayer-supplied bailout monies. It is nice to see Congress suddenly concerned about taxpayer money for a change, or even that they recognize the money as coming from the taxpayer and not belonging to the government.

I suppose before I jump off into my rant, it is required that I offer the obligatory distancing speech from AIG. Here goes: What AIG did was reprehensible and there are plenty of bad actors among the leadership of that company that paying bonuses was questionable at best. Many of them don’t deserve bonuses for the harm their actions have wrought. However, I would stop short of suggesting that these execs fall on their swords.

Having said that, what in the hell was the House thinking? Sen. Christopher Dodd inserted a provision in the bailout contractually obligating AIG to pay bonuses to its executives (although Dodd is now pointing at Geithner as the guilty party, either way…). As a result, AIG paid out $165 milllion worth of the $173 billion it received in the bailout. (For those who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s less than 1/10th of 1%). The company was contractually obligated to make the payments and the Senate Banking Committee and Treasury Department were well aware of the fact. But, when folks like Barney Frank heard that AIG was paying out bonuses to its execs, the spittle began to fly and politicians across this great land began to grandstand and demogogue. They so whipped themselves into a frenzy, that they thought nothing of passing a bill of attainder in the House to recoup 90% of the bonuses. After all, let us not forget who that money really belongs to (and the right answer is not taxpayers). If AIG is going to try to give that money to people who are politically toxic, Congress has an obligation to reassert its authority over those funds – no matter how unconstitutional the measure it has to adopt.

The one comforting thing I think we can all take from this is the certainty that we can trust that this is limited to the bailout money. We should not worry that contracts have been imperiled by Congress’ act. We should go about our daily business entering into contracts freely, secure in the knowledge that, at least as long as the politicians approve of both parties to a particular contract and don’t perceive that any politically disfavored person is being enriched by the contract, that your contracts are perfectly safe from government interference.

This site is hilarious for a number of reasons but I especially love their new t-shirts.  The “too big to fail” one is already in my shopping cart.

Obama has nominated a fourth tax dodger to his administration.  Ron Kirk, former mayor of Dallas, failed to included a series of speaking fees in his income and he later claimed deduction for the cost of his season tickets to Dallas Maverick games!  Kirk has since agreed to pay $10,000 in back taxes.

Change we can believe in?  Nah, just the same old thieves and crooks Washington has always known.  But what did you expect, an ethical politician from Chicago?

Add to that Doublethink: “Its not nationalization, its protecting the taxpayer’s interests.” A la Harry Reid discussing the potential take over of insolvent bank Citi Group by Uncle Sam.  We can also include President Obama in the Ministry of Truth for his statement that he will slash the budget deficit in half.  He said this on the heels of increasing the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars!  Under Obama, the deficit climbed from $1.2 trillion or nearly $2 trillion and he hasn’t been president for even 100 days yet!  Let me get this straight, we can only save ourselves by spending more and increasing the deficit, yet “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.”  Which is it, Mr. Obama?

I now leave you to spend some quality time with Jim Rogers.

The president unveiled his plan to free the credit markets. SURPRISE! It appears it will costs about $1.5 trillion. It is not clear how much of that will be government expenditures and what percentage will be from coerced rich folk. I just wonder what happens if there are not many rich folks who want to buy failed debt. As I see it, if that happens, there are two possibilities. First, the government to force them to make the purchase anyway with threats of some sort of sanction (think: tax code). Second, the government could entice them by guaranteeing their contributions with promises of increased returns to offset the risk they are taking on. Both versions entail tyranny on a level that America has never seen. The second would cost taxpayers significantly more than the $1.5 trillion estimate that Geithner is touting.

Details are sketchy at this point, so you can be sure that the push to pass whatever legislation is required will begin now. At this point, truly, what is another trillion give or take. We’re equally screwed whether we spend it or not.

Obama has managed to nominate a third tax cheat to his administration.  Nancy Killefer has withdrawn her candidacy to be the chief performance officer for the federal government.  The former assistant Treasury secretary for management failed to pay payroll taxes for her nanny and housekeeper over the course of one and a half years. That makes three known tax cheats Obama has appointed so far.  Who knows how many more there are yet undiscovered?

Obama: Change his cabinet will keep!

UPDATE: Dastardly Daschle is out!  Following Richardson’s and Killefer’s lead, He withdrew his candidacy today.

Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, is now Secretary of the Treasury.  As such, he is charged with leading the Internal Revenue Service.  The man that believes he is too good to pay taxes now demands that you pay yours.  After all, you are no Geithner, so pay up sucka.

Just to put things in to perspective, we now have a tax cheat writing the revenue laws (Rangel- tax cheat from NY) a tax cheat collecting your hard earned dollars (Geithner- tax cheat also from NY) and a tax thief distributing your tax dollars back out (Obama- tax thief from IL)  to rich thieves on Wall Street and beyond (Bailed-out corporations-tax thieves from around the United States.) Don’t complain, you know that nice guys finish last.

Happy filing of your Form 1040!

I dropped into a local watering hole with a buddy last night and the conversation, as it regularly does, turned to the financial crisis. He made a suggestion that I thought was pretty brilliant. Why not eliminate accrual accounting? For those without an accounting class under their belt, there are two types of accounting methods that businesses use to account for income: cash basis and accrual basis. Cash basis is the most intuitive to understand. If I contract to paint another person’s house next spring, I report the income when I have completed the job and the homeowner sends me a check. Once I have the cash in hand, it gets reported on my balance sheet. Accrual basis, on the other hand, would allow me to report that income on this year’s balance sheet on the theory that once the contract is signed, it is an asset with value equal to the receivables I anticipate.

In large part, it seems this is what has been occurring with the banks. They have written a number of mortgages and reported the income from them on their balance sheets. The fat balance sheets look attractive to investors and so investment monies pour in. Nonetheless, as we have now learned, many of those loans were not worth the paper they were written on because the homeowners were never able to pay them back. The financial institution benefited by the inflow of income from investors in the short term, putting the onus of the inevitable loss on those investors. If the banks had been required to report income on a cash basis, they could not have reported income on bad loans. Loans which were in default, therefore, would have been conspicuous on the balance sheets for their absence – indeed, they would have shown a loss. Investors would have been better informed of the true nature of the company’s financial situation and may have demanded a resolution to this problem well before it got to the point where the institutions were in collapse. Indeed, there may have never been the need for a bailout had investors been aware of the state of the companies’ loans allowing them to demand stricter lending criteria from the institutions early on.

Another idea this buddy proposed when the first round of bailouts was announced was the requirement that the banks actually loan all the bailout money to consumers. It seems simple, but Congress made no such requirements in all the “oversight” they placed on the banks. As a result, we have seen, the banks used the money to purchase other banks and the credit crisis was largely unresolved. Now that Obama is pushing for the other half of the TARP money to be released, I seriously hope it will be under the proviso that the banks can only use the money for loans to consumers. If Congress were to do that, it might even alleviate some of the problems that GM and Chrysler are facing by making money available to people who want to purchase one of their vehicles.

Timothy Geithner, the notorious tax cheat, is way too close to being confirmed as the Secretary of the Treasury.  I implore everyone to write to the senators on the Senate Committee on Finance to oppose Geithner’s confirmation.  Click here to see a list of the Senators on the committee.

Geithner failed to pay self-employment tax on income earned in previous years and did so only when told to by Obama’s people during his vetting process.  He claimed it was a simple “mistake.”  Likely story.  How can a person that runs a Federal Reserve bank make such a huge and glaring mistake on his taxes?  Geithner is not trustworthy and should not have access to taxpayer funds.  Please, oppose his confirmation.

A new report claims that Obama’s golden boy for the Treasury is a tax cheat. Geithner’s failure to pay taxes ($34,000) may be a federal crime and it definitely renders him unfit to run Treasury.  Its not surprising that he only paid up when Obama’s hounds uncovered his scam while vetting him for the position.

But, hey, if nominated and approved he and Charles Rangel can cheat on their taxes together and continue to fleece the honest taxpayers.  Ahhh, partners in crime.  Is this the change the nation signed up for?

UPDATE:

Republicans and Democrats agree that Geithner is a stand-up guy.  So what if he made a “mistake” on his income tax returns?  That doesn’t make him a cheat, does it?  Be prepared, Americans, an exposed cheat is going to be confirmed.  Does any senator out there care about ethics and the rule of law?  I guess not

Fox is reporting that the recount of votes in MN is favoring Democratic challenger Al Franken over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman.  The problem, as portrayed by Fox, is in the way some ballots are being re-counted.  It sure looks like Franken is set to steal the election.

Say Franken does win by obviously less than fair play, what should the voters in MN do?  Protest?  Sue?  What is the correct response?  What should the Governor do?  What should the U.S. Senate do?  Should anyone/someone do something? Any thoughts?  Minnesotans, any ideas?

Last night the representatives the states rejected the House’s plan to bail out the Big Three automakers. The disagreement lay in the House’s refusal to force the unions to accept pay concessions. Last night Nancy Pelosi called upon the White House to circumvent the will of the States and impose a bailout by shunting monies already allocated for the financial crisis to the car companies and their unions.

Not surprisingly, President Bush is considering Pelosi’s demands. However, before acceding to the demands of Pelosi, Levin, and Gettelfinger, Bush should consider the long-term costs to the economy of allowing the carmakers to escape their poor management and the union’s rapaciousness. It is acknowledged that this is to be only a bridge “loan” meaning that everyone fully expects to be back in this same position at a later date when the carmakers blow through the money. Bush should also consider whether caving in to the Democrats will make Michigan any redder, whether the Unions will switch allegiances or if, politically, it will only serve to save the bacon of a number of Democrat representatives.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but it seems that diverting funds that Congress approved for the finincial markets and repurposing them to bail out the automakers may be impermissible under the Constitution’s clear rule that only Congress has the authority to spend. Congress last night rejected further spending for the purpose of bailing out Detroit. It would be violation of the separation of powers for the executive branch to conduct an end run around that inconvenient fact. Another breach of contract seems to be in the offing.

The American auto industry will be taken over by a czar, a “car czar” that is.  President Bush and top Democrat lawmakers have agreed in principal to continue robbing the taxpayers while expanding the scope and power of the federal government.

Under the plan, the Bush and Obama administrations will work together to find a “suitable” de-facto owner of the Big Three.  This “car czar” will hold the strings of a purse filled with $15 billion in looted cash.  He alone will have the right to spend, demand repayment and force bankruptcy of the now federalized industry.  The power Motor City once generated will now be delivered by the Big Red Washington Machine.  In return for stealing from the taxpayers (again) and giving the funds to private businesses (again), Washington will receive a massive cut of profits (if any); A sort of steal-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-dumb-and-rich maneuver.  Shareholders, however, are to be barred from receiving dividends or other distributions.  So, the only real winners here are the federal government, the giant and lazy unions and auto executives.  Everyone else loses big time.

Those who know me know that there has never been a bigger supporter of the American auto industry than myself.  I have never owned anything other than a Ford product.  Should FOMOCO take one penny, one red cent from this “loan” I swear I will never buy another of their products.  The same goes for Chrysler (owned, incidentally, by a CANADIAN company with plenty of money) and GM.  As crazy as it sounds, the most American thing I could do under those circumstances would be to buy…gulp…a Toyota or Subaru.  I swear it shall be done.

With the take-over of the financial markets and now the stealing of the auto industry, I have to wonder what is next.  Utilities?  Already happened or happening.  Water?  Ditto.  Agriculture?  Probably not too far off.  How far will this go until we see full fledged fascist socialism in this nation?  We are goose-stepping at an ever increasing pace.

Or at least his Secretary of the Treasury did. It appears that the $700 billion that was appropriated to purchase assets of failed financial institutions will now be used to prop up credit card companies and student loan providers.

And now they expect us to trust them when it comes to bailing out other industries? Seems they’re a little free with our money, folks. If the government is going to pay our credit card bills, does that mean we should stop paying?

Pretty good article over at WSJ with insider accounts of some key moments from the McCain and Obama campaigns. Here’s a good part: 

The next day, while conservative House Republicans maneuvered behind the scenes to block the bailout bill, Sen. McCain sat largely silent at a crisis summit at the White House. Afterward, Sen. Obama called his staff from his car: “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, according to several aides. “Some of the Republicans are clueless. Bush and I were trying to convince them.”

Ah, so the Transformational, Transcendent Candidate for Change and all that conspired with George W. Bush to rob the American people of $700 billion for the enrichment of wealthy Wall Street bankers. I’ll be darned!

Then there’s this:

Meanwhile, Sen. McCain was meeting with Wall Street supporters such as investor Henry Kravis, J.P. Morgan Chase Vice Chairman James B. Lee Jr. and Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain, who told him the global credit markets could “seize up” without definitive action. Some chided the candidate for attacking all of Wall Street and suggesting financial CEOs shouldn’t make more than the president’s salary of $400,000.

You’ve been a very bad boy, McCain!

But McCain’s blustering about greed and executive salaries in the midst of a McCain-supported, epic, world-historical ripoff benefiting those same greedy Wall Street titans pretty much epitomizes the vacuity and hypocrisy of the McCain campaign.

It must be nice to have the Democratic nominee in one pocket, and the Republican nominee in the other. Good show, Wall Street!

Oh, and let me remind you once again that this was the most important election of our lifetimes.

After “our” representatives in Washington authorized a whooping $700 billion buy up of bad debts, Treasury has announced that they will make available another $900 billion in “loans” to troubled banks.  This brings the total of U.S. Taxpayer dollars used to buy bad debt from rich bankers to a staggering $1.6 trillion!

What can you do but laugh?  Americans are losing the fight for freedom at home.  Previously I laughed at Karl’s great depression.  I, in spite of the Dodger’s victories, am starting to feel his sickness.

UPDATE:  Now the Federal Reserve plans on buying up $100 billion worth of short-term debt from a large number of U.S. businesses.  This brings our total to $1.7 trillion and counting.

UPDATE II:  Comrade Pelosi would like to see an additional $150 billion added to the bailout.  AND McCain proposes that the Federal government purchase the mortgages of Americans!  Holy crap!  Folks, we are now approaching the $2 trillion level, still not counting the AIG buy up.  While we are at it, let’s socialize medicine, buy everyone insurance, a car to get to work, groceries for a year, a new puppy, pay off everyone’s credit cards and relieve everyone of Federal student debt.  Oh, yeah we may have to raise taxes by a marginal 150%.  No big deal.

On July 1, 2008 the City Council of Ventura, California imposed on its residents a fee to call for help from police, fire or other emergency services.  Despite paying taxes to the city for these very basic services, a $1.49 per month tax per telephone line was imposed.  Don’t want to pay the tax per month?  No problem, the city graciously allowed residents to elect a $17.88 per emergency call.

The Council rammed the fee down our throats with out the constitutionally required vote because, they said, they needed to offset the cost of new 911 call center which cost the city about $3 million dollars.  The 911 fee is estimated to bring about $2.6 million a year into the city coffers.  However, instead of using the funds to pay off the center, the city will use $1.24 million to pay for six new police officers and 3 new fire fighters.  The rest will be used to pad the pensions of public servants.  So, to be clear, the City Council has taxed us to pay for police and firefighters as well as their retirements.  In addition to the 911 tax, the City has also voted to raise water and sewer rates. Despite the fact that the city uses less water today than it did in 1970 even though the population has more than doubled in that time, starting in 2009 water and sewer rates will jump by 14%!  Adding insult to injury, the Council will place parking meters downtown, starting in January of ‘09.  Our city has a population of just over 100,000.  In downtown alone there are nearly 8,000 public parking spaces.  According to the Ventura County Star, nearly every public lot in the downtown area has vacancies on any given day or night.  The only goal of the meters, then, is to raise revenue, though the Council claims they are putting them in to alleviate parking congestion.

The increase in both rates and taxes comes amid turbulent economic times and massive fiscal waste by our Council members.  For fiscal year 2008-09, the City has an operating budget of over $93 million.  In the spirit of openness and transparency, I have included highlights of Ventura’s gross fiscal waste.

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