My Blog

Category: Politics

  • Alderman Flip-Flops Again on Chick-fil-A

    A Chicago alderman once again is threatening to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in his Northwest Side ward because of the owner’s stance against gay marriage — after saying earlier that he had dropped his opposition to the fast-food outlet.

    Ald. Proco “Joe” Moreno, 1st, accused Dan Cathy, president of the family-owned restaurant chain, of reneging on his company’s apparent promises to issue a statement vowing to treat people of all sexual orientations with respect and no longer allow the company to contribute to groups that oppose gay marriage.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    In the words of Joe Biden:  Ald. Moreno was against Chick-fil-A before he was for it.

    What an idiot.  All you had to do Alderman was keep your mouth shut and you wouldn’t have any of these issues.  You wouldn’t look like a fool changing your mind every two minutes and trying to blame someone for lying to you.  Stop it.  It makes you look clueless and weak.  What are you eleven years old?

     

  • Airlines Fees vs. Fares: Impacting Taxes

    The liberal Washington Post complains:

    There’s a 7.5 percent federal tax on every airline ticket. The money goes into a fund that pays for the air transportation system: airports, capital improvements and the operation of the Federal Aviation Administration.  …

    When the airlines kept ticket prices down by shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees, they also saved almost $964 million in federal taxes they would have owed if they had hiked ticket prices by that amount.

    via The Washington Post.

    What crap.

    First let’s take a look at the real story when it comes to airline taxes:

    – September 11 Security Fee: A September 11 Security Fee of $2.50 USD applies per flight segment (maximum charge per trip — $5.00 USD one-way, $10.00 USD round-trip). A flight segment is defined as one takeoff and one landing.

    – Passenger Facility Charges: Passenger Facility Charges (PFCs) of up to $18.00 USD may apply, depending upon the itinerary chosen.

    – Federal Excise Tax: A 7.5% domestic tax is applied to the airline base fare. The tax may be pro-rated for flights to/from the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Alaska and Hawaii, and some international destinations. A Travel Facilities Tax of $8.40 USD per direction also applies to flights to/from Alaska and Hawaii and the 48 contiguous U.S. states or between Alaska and Hawaii.

    – Federal Domestic Flight Segment Fee: A federal domestic flight segment fee of $3.80 USD applies per flight segment. A flight segment is defined as one takeoff and one landing.

    Looks like the G is getting more than it’s fair share of the airline travelers’ dollar.  The money collected — and wasted — by the TSA and FAA is staggering.  It’s no wonder that back in March the Orlando Sanford Intl. Airport was choosing to opt-out of using the TSA for security screenings.  Regardless of how they spend it, the government is taking plenty of money from the airline traveler.

    Also, let’s take a look at the wording of the story.  The newspaper writes, “When the airlines kept ticket prices down by shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees, they also saved almost $964 million in federal taxes….”  Wrong!  The airlines didn’t save anything; the consumer saved.  This sentence should be written, “By shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees airline passengers saved nearly $1 billion in taxes that the federal government would have otherwise imposed.

    The headline of this story should be, “Shifting fares to fees permitted $1 billion in extra air travel last year.”  Air traveler the big winner.

    Further, the baggage fees were NOT paid by everyone.  If you travel light and didn’t check a bag you paid nothing.  If you needed to check a bag, then you paid for the service you received.

    The whole situation seems very fair to me.  That the government is out the money is just icing on the cake.

  • The Fed & Debt Cancelation

    I met a European trader in a bar this week, who brought up the possibility that at some point, the Bank of England might just rip up the UK government debt it has acquired through quantitative easing — just straight up throw it on the fire, and tell the government it no longer owes the money.

    The Bank of England — just like the Fed — has bought a ton of UK government debt as part of its attempt to juice the economy.

    This idea has been going around, and picking up buzz.  …

    As the person I talked to put it: It’s really hard to see what would be so bad about it. Would the entire system of finance collapse? There’s just no reason to think it would.

    Probably the worst thing to come out of it would be inflation. Right now, the Fed or Bank of England “prints” money in QE, but for every $100 injected into the system, $100 in equivalent securities are sucked out and put on the central bank’s balance sheet, so basically it’s a wash. This is why, despite the gigantic expansion of the balance sheet, inflation has been muted and (at least in the US) the trend remains towards disinflation.

    via Business Insider.

    An interesting idea.  Of course the author here, Joe Weisenthal, is absolutely wrong claiming there is disinflation in this country.  Food and energy prices have nearly doubled in the last 4 years.  That cars and machines machines are cheap is only because people simply don’t have the money to buy them.  The government (a/k/a the Obama administration) has so played with the CPI that it’s no longer reflective of how American’s actually spend their money.  Things people need are more expensive today than ever before.

    But what would really happen if the Fed just cancelled the debt?  The truth is that life would go on and the entire financial system would not collapse.  That much is true.

    But there is this thing called inflation that no one, NO ONE, wants to talk about.  Not Obama, not Romney, not Bernanke, not the media.  It’s coming.  Everyone knows it’s coming.  The Fed cannot inject several trillion dollars into the economy and there not be inflation.  The only question is whether we get 4-5% for a few years or we get 9-11%.  The former is desired the latter not so much.

    This is all going to boil down to the velocity of money.  Right now, the Fed has printed so much money that it is still all sitting in the banks.  It has not yet been absorbed into the marketplace.  i.e.  It’s moving rather slowly.  However the banks are the bottleneck when it comes to money.  It takes them a long time to make decisions.  Once the money is clear of the banks it can move much — MUCH — more quickly.

    Right now the Fed is driving with it foot on the gas & the pedal to the floor.  It’s pumping as much money into the system as the system will allow.

    There will come a time when the Fed will have to get off the gas and hit the brakes… hard.

    Cancelling the debt is kinda like cutting the brake line on the car.  I don’t know of any vehicle that is easy to control when driven hard throttle to hard brakes.  It’s certainly going to be much harder to control if you can only downshift because you don’t have any brakes.

     

  • Obama Illegaly Accepts Foreign Donations

    The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.

    Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.

    via NYPOST.com.

    This is kinda like Al Gore walking out of the Buddhist temple with a suitcase full of cash and not asking any questions.

    We need an investigation into this.

  • Mitt Romney Banner Hung on Willis Tower

    John Rukavina, 74, a Local 1 ironworker — who claims to have put up “every antenna and tower in Chicago since Marina Towers in 1974” — affixed a Romney banner as well as an American flag on the ABC antenna on Willis Tower minutes after it was completed Sept. 30.

    “The flag is a symbol — an old ironworker’s custom — which is hung if the job went well,” said Rukavina, who said he worked on the Sears Tower antenna in 1978. He’s also worked on the John Hancock Center and New York’s World Trade Center.

    “I promised my sister, Anna, a year ago I would use the burial flag of her husband, a World War II Navy veteran, when we topped off the antenna,” he told Sneed.

    “But I didn’t tell anyone I was going to put up the Romney poster. I did that on my own and it was hard going. The wind was blowing like crazy that day,” he said. “But I wanted to make that gesture the last thing I did.

    via Sun-Times.

    Pretty cool regardless of your politics.

  • Cook County’s New Business Killers, a/k/a Taxes

    Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s proposed budget calls for a 1.25 percent tax on businesses that buy “non-titled” items like office supplies, equipment, building materials and even artwork from outside the county’s borders.  …

    County businesses would be allowed to purchase these goods up to $2,500 without any penalty, county officials said. The businesses are responsible for self-reporting the purchases to the county’s revenue department. A Preckwinkle spokesman said the county expects most businesses will comply.  …

    The tax is among several initiatives Preckwinkle announced Thursday during a budget presentation, which also called for an additional $1 tax per pack on cigarettes, a 5-cent tax on bullets and an additional $25 tax on gun purchases.

    “We’re proposing (these taxes) to subsidize health care,” Preckwinkle said. “Cigarette smoking is the No. 1 cause of preventable disease and gun violence is incredibly expensive.”

    The cigarette tax is expected to generate $25.6 million additional revenue in the coming year, and the taxes on guns and bullets are anticipated to bring the county an extra $1 million over the course of 2013.

    via Daily Herald.

    Shear insanity.  There are so many problems here it’s hard to know where to begin.

    As to the increase in the cigarette tax… this is a proven loser.  In 2006 the county earned over $200 million annually from cigarette taxes.  Then they doubled the tax.  Revenue fell to around $131 million.  Now she wants to raise the tax again… that’s the worst thing you can do.  If you want more revenue from cigarettes you need to LOWER the tax rate, not raise it.  The problem here is that Preckwinkle, like all Democrats, do not understand or even believe in the Laffer Curve.  They’re honestly just dumb that way.

    How about this tax on bullets?  Well I currently buy a box of 100 rounds out at the Wal-Mart in Villa Park for about $30 + sales tax, or around $33.  Now Preckwinkle wants to add $5 to that box.  Guess what Toni?  I will NOT be buying my ammo in Cook County anymore.  So you’re not going to raise $5 from me… you’re going to lose the $3 in sales tax.  Your “bullet tax” is going to cost the County money…. Lots of money.  Like the cigarette tax, this idea is a net loser.  You know what else, you won’t even be able to claim that I “use” the product (in this case bullets) in Cook County b/c pretty soon all the shooting ranges in the county will go out of business.  So I’ll go shoot in Indiana.  That will be more tax revenue lost.

    Lastly, what is up with this office supply tax?  Preckwinkle actually has the stones to call this tax “pro-business” thinking that people will simply comply and buy all there stuff from within the county.  That’s laughable.  She’s such a fool.  How about this Toni; ya think that someone might just open their business in Will, DuPage, or Lake county instead of Cook County?  Guess what Toni, you just made all the office buildings on the North side of Lake Cook road more valuable than the ones on the South side.  Same goes for 191st Street on the south.  You’re now creating another incentive for people to (a) open their businesses outside the county, and (b) move their businesses outside the county.  This tax will cost many many times more than whatever revenue it brings in.

    Cook County needs new leadership or it’s going to die.

     

  • 12-year-old Girl + Shotgun > Large Bad Man

    A 12-year-old girl is being hailed a hero for shooting a home intruder after she hid with a gun in the closet.

    Kendra St Clair, from Oklahoma, was home alone when she heard someone break in.

    She called her mother and asked what she should do, and her terrified mom told her to get the gun and hide in the closet and stay there until she thought the coast was clear.

    But when she emerged from her hiding space and went to the back door, she saw the intruder was still trying to break in and ran back into the closet.  …

    ‘When I was back there (in the closet) on the phone with 911, I heard the bathroom light turn on that was leading to the closet. And when I saw the door handle turn, I shot him.

    via Daily Mail Online.

    I wrote before about how guns are great equalizer for self defense; especially for women.  Self defense is one of the basket of rights we inherit from our creator.  It does not come from the government; it cannot be taken away.

    All rational people would hate to think of what would have happened — how differently this situation could have turned out — if this little girl did not have that shotgun.

    Shame on those who would take it away from her.

  • Benghazi Attack Organizer Mocks Obama

    Five weeks after an assault on the US consulate in Benghazi left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, the reaction from Washington has been anything but fruitful. No elected official has yet to reveal with certainty who led the attack, and both the White House and the US State Department have at times offered entirely different explanations for the assumed motives of the assailants.  …

    Mr. Obama stated, “…  I wasn’t confused about the fact that we have to hunt down whoever did it and bring them to justice. As I said during the debate, nobody is more interested in figuring this out than I am.”Even if Mr. Obama’s insistence regarding his investment in the attack is genuine, journalists with both the New York Times and Reuters may have already done a better job than all of the government agencies combined. At the same time Pres. Obama endorsed a thorough investigation into the attack, articles published by major media outlets had already accomplished as much.

    On Thursday, the Times published an interview alleged to have recently occurred between one of their reporters and Ahmed Abu Khattala, described to the paper by both witnesses and Libyan authorities as a ring-leader of the September 11, 2012 assault.

    When Pres. Obama told Stewart that he is still very serious about hunting down any persons with a part in the attack, the Times had already conducted a sit-down with the suspected terrorist at a “crowded luxury hotel” in Benghazi, where the paper described Khattala as nonplussed and anything but concerned about repercussions from the White House. The Libyan national Army assumingly in cahoots with the Obama administration was a “chicken,” Khattala said, and US politicians were “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”

    “Suspect in Libya Attack, in Plain Sight, Scoffs at U.S.,” the Times headline reads.

    via RT.

    This situation reminds me of when O.J. Simpson went out looking for the real killer.  He checked several golf courses throughout Florida and couldn’t find anything.

    The real question is why this story has not been picked-up by the MSM, a/k/a the Ministry of Truth?  No word of this on NBC, CBS, even Fox.  What gives?

    The president is clear not really all that focused on bringing this guy to justice.  That’s pretty sad.

     

  • Censorship: This is How it Begins

    Spain’s government is drafting a law that bans the photographing and filming of members of the police. The Interior Ministry assures they are not cracking down on freedom of expression, but protecting the lives of law enforcement officers.  …

    ­The new Citizen Safety Law will prohibit “the capture, reproduction and editing of images, sounds or information of members of the security or armed forces in the line of duty,” said the director general of the police, Ignacio Cosido. He added that this new bill seeks to “find a balance between the protection of citizens’ rights and those of security forces.”

    The dissemination of images and videos over social networks like Facebook will also be punishable under the legislation.

    via RT.

    “Oh it could never happen here.”  That’s what the Spanish used to think.  Now look at them.

    Note the language of the law. It’s the Citizen Safety Law.  Bullshit!  It has nothing to do with the safety of citizens.  It about making sure that people do not record the unlawful acts of their own government.

    In case you don’t know, Spain is going through a tough time right now because for years and years they spend more money than the had.  They go too far into debt and now they have to pay the bills.  The austerity measures are not very popular.  So people have been taking to the streets.  The government don’t like that.

    Keep this in mind as we start having to pay down our own debt.  Something is going to have to give… People are going to take to the streets.  There may very well be some violent confrontations between people and police.  Those confrontations need to be public.  Not limited to what the government, a/k/a The Ministry of Truth, tells us what happened.

    It can happen there… it can happen here.  Prepare yourself.

  • Obama Wrong: US Troops to Remain in Afghanistan

    Despite repeated pleas from US President Barack Obama to conclude the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, a leading official with the State Department tells reporters this week that the United States is readying plans that will leave boots on the ground for the unforeseeable future, perhaps long after the Obama-insisted deadline comes and goes.

    Marc Grossman, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, reportedly told the press on Tuesday that upcoming negotiations in the region will iron out how and who will be left overseas after 2014 to allegedly engage in counterterrorism efforts and assist Afghans with military training.  …

    Grossman adds that the State Dept. has already held meetings to discuss “how we will manage our forces going forward in Afghanistan,” and now must begin negotiations to figure out a number of factors, including who and how many troops will be left behind.via RT.

    Is anyone really surprised?

    We need to simply bring everyone home.  Now.  Just pick-up and pull-out.  The entire country has been a war zone for the last 40-50 years; actually since the dawn of time itself.  We simply do not belong there.  It’s serving no national foreign policy objective.

    Al-Qaida just moves the base of operation into Africa and they use the Afghan war as a reason to bring more young loyalist into the fold.  Our actions there are counter-productive.  It’s not worth a single human life to try to change the geo-politics of that region.