Start spreadin' the news... I'm headin' down south...
Yep... it's that time of year! Charleston, S.C., here I (we) come... via Richmond, V.A.!
Come tomorrow (Saturday) 5:00 a.m. we'll be on the road!
You know what this means, right, folks? Today's gonna be the last "formal" posting till probably June 4th.
Ahh... Charleston! Kiawah! St. John's Island! Folly Beach! Red's on Shem Creek! Hopefully even a day in neighboring Savannah, G.A.!
Pat... Vicki... Sean... Uncle Bill is a'comin'!
9 comments:
http://immigrationreform.com/2012/05/24/illegal-aliens-continue-to-receive-billions-in-tax-credit-thanks-to-harry-reid/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Top%205%20Immigration%20Stories&utm_content=Top+5+May+25%2C+2012
* AND...
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p972/ar02.html#en_US_2011_publink100012080
If you paid taxes last year, you helped subsidize the income of illegal aliens.
Right now, the IRS doles out a $1000-per-kid Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) to families regardless of immigration status.
The result?
Illegal aliens receive billions of taxpayer dollars each year, even if they haven’t paid any income tax themselves.
In fact, the Inspector General for the U.S. Treasury Department released a report last year revealing that illegal aliens annually received $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits, primarily through the ACTC. (See IG Report, July 2011) Illegal aliens claim the ACTC by using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN), which the IRS grants to them regardless of legal status.
On Tuesday, Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) requested their legislation (S. 577) to fix this problem be considered and passed on the Senate Floor. S. 577 would close this loophole by requiring that individuals who claim the ACTC provide a valid Social Security Number — something illegal aliens aren’t lawfully able to obtain. (See S. 577 § 2)
Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) objected to their request, insisting on stubbornly standing in the way of this needed solution.
This legislation presents a common-sense solution to what is currently a grave injustice to hardworking American taxpayers, and a huge financial drain on U.S. revenue. (Members of the House of Representatives agree, and have already passed similar companion legislation.)
Sen. Reid perpetuates the message that the U.S. government is perfectly happy to give hand-outs to anyone who dares to enter the U.S. illegally. Even if it’s on the backs of financially-strained American families.
* ALL THE LINKS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN THE PRESS RELEASE (LINK PROVIDED.) FOLKS... I WOULDN'T POST THIS STUFF UNLESS I KNEW IT WAS TRUE. (*SHRUG*)
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20120521/NEWS/120521008/Mississippi-prison-locked-down-after-deadly-riot?odyssey=nav|head
A privately run prison in Mississippi for illegal immigrants remained on lockdown Monday after a riot that began a day earlier left one guard dead and at least 19 people injured, officials said.
All of the roughly 2,500 inmates were secured in their housing units at the Adams County Correctional Facility by 2:45 a.m., nearly 12 hours after the riot began, Mike Machak, a spokesman for the company that owns the facility, said in a statement.
The prison remained on lockdown, and officials were assessing damage at the southwest Mississippi prison owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, the statement said.
The 2,567-bed prison near Natchez houses adult male illegal immigrants, most of whom re-entered the U.S. after being deported, said Emilee Beach, a prison spokeswoman.
Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke said the facility holds low-security inmates.
The statement from Machak early Monday said prison employees would work closely with law enforcement to investigate the riot.
"CCA will support full prosecution under the law for all inmates identified as having committed criminal acts during the disturbance," the statement said.
Prison officials have not identified the guard who died.
Machak said 16 other employees were treated and released from a hospital for various injuries. Three inmates were hurt.
According to its website, CCA houses about 75,000 offenders and detainees in more than 60 facilities around the country.
Sunday's riot is not the first time CCA prisons have seen disturbances.
In 2004, inmates at another CCA prison in Mississippi, the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, set fire to mattresses, clothing and a portable toilet. No injuries were reported. The company announced after that disturbance that it would add about 25 guards at the Tallahatchie County facility.
In Idaho, the high level of violence at a CCA-run prison has prompted federal lawsuits, public scrutiny and increased state oversight. In 2010, Vermont inmates being held at a CCA prison in Tennessee were subdued with chemical grenades after refusing to return to their cells.
* I'M NOT A FAN OF "PRIVATIZATION" OF PRISONS - PARTICULARLY FEDERAL FACILITIES. THAT SAID... THESE ILLEGALS SHOULD BE ON CHAIN GANGS BUILDING BORDER FENCING. AS TO RIOTING PRISONERS... SHOT 'EM DOWN LIKE RABID DOGS BEFORE THEY CAN HURT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/smoke_screen_of_self_delusion_PvTx6vXdY3qTy41OHRggTJ
Tuesday night, two more Democratic primaries brought bad news to the sitting Democratic president.
More than four of every 10 Democrats who went to the polls in Arkansas and Kentucky voted against him.
Obama was able to secure only 58% of the primary vote in each state.
* IT IS AMAZING HOW LITTLE COVERAGE THIS IS GETTING... (*PURSED LIPS*)
This follows the 41% showing in the West Virginia primary for a felon sitting in a Texas jail...
* COM'ON... EVEN IF YOU'RE A HYPER-PARTISAN OBAMA FAN YOU'VE GOTTA LAUGH AT THAT ONE!
(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)
Twenty percent of Democratic voters in North Carolina’s primary actually voted “no preference” rather than pull the lever for their party leader and president.
(*SNORT*)
Granted, of all these states, Obama won only North Carolina in 2008. But remember, these are Democratic voters[!]
[T]hey live in states that are perfectly hospitable to Democratic politicians - all four have Democratic governors; West Virginia has two Democratic senators, while North Carolina and Arkansas each have one.
Instantly, the Obama-defensive media sprang into action and located the nefarious explanation for these dreadful numbers: To wit, the voters are evil.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza said the results “have drawn a collective eye-roll from Democrats and many others who closely follow national politics who ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism.
* JEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST... (*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING...
No, none of these Democrats are willing to put their name to that allegation . . . But it is without question the prevalent viewpoint they hold privately.”
Wait a minute[!] Haven’t I been told for 30 years now — and by such media eminences as the longtime Washington Postie Thomas B. Edsall — that dastardly Democratic racists in Southern states had left their party for the more cruelly Caucasian climes of the GOP and had thereby turned Dixie into a Republican stronghold?
Why, yes I have[!]
(*CHUCKLING*)
But despite the theory that the GOP had sucked in all the available racists in a 12-state area over the past 30 years, apparently there are still melanin-hating meshugenahs in the Democratic camp. It took having a black president to smoke them out at last. They were so clever at hiding their tracks that they probably even voted for the black candidate in 2008.
(*AMUSED SNORT*)
Only rather than switching parties like a normal evil racist would do, they chose to stay Democrats in 2012 just so they could embarrass and humiliate Obama.
(*LAUGHING OUT LOUD*)
Those who assert that Obama’s poor showing among voters in his own party is due to the one factor he can’t control are not doing him any favors. They are, instead, helping create a smoke screen of self-delusion. This is a refusal to look at real-time election results with a cool and dispassionate eye.
What these four states offer isn’t polling information with a few hundred people standing in for a few hundred thousand. These are hundreds of thousands of actual voters in a grouping intrinsically favorable to Obama, and they are saying something about the viability of his re-election.
Obama avoided facing a primary challenger; good for him. But it turns out that Democrats who would’ve sent a message to him via such a challenger are simply conjuring one up with whatever is at hand.
That is important, because while no primary challenger has ever knocked off a president, every president with a serious primary challenger has lost his second-term bid.
* PLEASE, GOD... PLEASE, GOD... PLEASE, GOD... PLEASE, GOD...
(*ON MY KNEES PRAYING*)
What does it mean, then, when a president with unserious challengers...can’t get over 60% in three successive states? (It means Big Trouble, is what it means!)
It also means we know what is going to be said if he loses — that it won’t be because of the sluggish economy, or the $2.5 trillion in new spending, or the failed stimulus.
We will be told, as we were this week, that he wasn’t be judged on the content of his candidacy, but on the color of his skin.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300989/clean-coal-means-no-coal-nash-keune
Two weeks ago, the Obama campaign quietly edited its website to highlight the president’s support for “clean coal.”
* FRACKING PHONY SON OF A BITCH... (*SPITTING ON THE FLOOR*)
In place of a section for “energy efficiency” with no mention of coal, BarackObama.com now boasts that the stimulus package “invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research.”
The administration’s position on coal has, shall we say, evolved.
(*SMIRK*)
In 2001, the EPA released an "endangerment finding" stating that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide threaten public health and the environment by contributing to climate change and that therefore they could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
* CARBON DIOXIDE. (LOOK IT UP IF NECESSARY.) (*SMIRK*)
Since then, as Bryan Walsh noted in Time magazine, the EPA has “embarked on what could be the most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history.”
Already, 57 coal-fired plants have closed owing to the EPA’s regulations, according to the National Mining Association.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Supporters insist that policies favoring renewable energy sources will lead to lower costs. However, the burden of these coal regulations has contributed to a $300 increase in the average household’s electricity bill over the last five years...
(*SIGH*)
USA Today reports that the rise in cost is due in part to “the expense of replacing old power plants, including heavily polluting — but cheap to operate — coal plants that don’t meet federal clean air requirements.”
* THE NEW CLEAN AIR REQUIREMENTS! THE EVER SHIFTING GOAL POSTS OF ENVIRONMENT "REGULATION."
It’s impossible to predict exactly how much these regulations will cost, as the standards themselves are likely to change. Under the Clean Air Act, when an outside group sues an energy producer for supposedly over-stepping an emission standard, the EPA can register a consent agreement, which settles the suit in exchange for toughening the standard industry-wide.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
This is one of the problems with, for example, the EPA’s new, first-ever fracking regulations. Drilling companies are required to install emission-limiting technology, which most already use. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has called the EPA’s regulatory restraint on this front a “miracle,” adding that “most wellheads and pipelines already exceed the EPA benchmark.” Once the EPA establishes regulations, however, they are bound to become more stringent over time. After the EPA produced its finding on greenhouse gases, for example, it declared that it would start regulating carbon, thereby initiating the continual ratcheting-up process.
(*NOD*)
Any hopes that the attempt by the Obama campaign to recast the president’s stance on coal presaged a change in the administration’s policies in the run-up to the election were soon dashed. On May 16, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson signed a toughened version of its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which require power companies to install equipment to reduce emissions of mercury, arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide in all coal and oil-fired plants by 2016.
* LIKE LUCY PULLING THE FOOTBALL AWAY JUST AS CHARLIE BROWN REACHES IT... (*SIGH*)
During a hearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Jackson testified that only about half of coal-fired plants now have such equipment. The goal of the new policy is to compel the rest of the plants into compliance, but it seems the new rules might simply chase some companies out of the market. According to West Virginia’s MetroNews, “the new standards Jackson signed . . . have already caused several power companies doing business in West Virginia to announce the closings of some of their older coal-fired power plants.”
This decision comes in the wake of the EPA’s proposal to cap carbon-dioxide emissions from new fossil-fuel-fired plants.
Signed by Jackson in March, the proposal when finalized would limit new power plants that are 25 megawatts and larger to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon pollution per megawatt hour of electricity. That would be a 40% to 60% percent decrease for the typical coal-fired plant.
The EPA “believes this proposed rule will have no notable compliance costs associated with it,” as it expects that new plants will already have the necessary equipment for carbon capture and sequestration because of “existing and expected market conditions.”
If that were true, then the proposal would be unnecessary.
(*NOD*) (*SHRUG*)
But even supporters of the proposal acknowledge (or celebrate) that the standards it imposes would raise costs. In an article for the Center for American Progress, Daniel Weiss, Jackie Weidman, and Celine Ramstein write that “these additional costs may make some proposed coal-fired power plants uneconomical, so they may be canceled.”
Like many euphemisms, “clean coal” is an oxymoron — the adjective cancels out the noun. Though Obama the candidate tries to appear friendly to all energy sources (especially ones associated with potential swing states, like coal and fracking-accessed shale in Ohio and Pennsylvania), Obama the president has long played favorites.
* SOLYNDRA ANYONE...?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300980/constitution-republican-plot-michael-g-franc
It’s one of the clearest, easiest-to-understand provisions in the Constitution. And Harry Reid’s Senate flouts it routinely.
The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
In addition to clarity, this provision has an even greater virtue: It serves a very good purpose. The Founding Fathers required revenue measures to originate in the House because they wanted this authority to belong to the legislative body closest to the people. Plus, the Framers wanted the larger states to enjoy the most influence on matters of taxing and spending, which is the case in the House (whose seats are allocated according to population) but not the Senate (where each state gets two seats regardless of population and smaller states have outsized influence).
“This power over the purse,” James Madison explained in Federalist No. 58, “may, in fact be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has taken to thumbing his nose at this clear mandate.
Recently, he publicly dismissed the Origination Clause as a “hyper-technical budget issue,” raised by his Republican opponents as “a fig leaf to hide their blatant obstruction.”
(*ERASING WHAT I JUST TYPED SO AS TO AVOID A VISIT BY THE FBI*)
In its version of the legislation extending federal price controls on student loans, the Senate included a hefty tax increase — ...absent the requisite House action.
Then there is the Violence against Women Act, which contains a new $30 fee for immigrant visas, another Senate revenue provision that violates the Origination Clause.
There is a constitutionally permissible way for the Senate to make its voice heard on revenue measures. Under widely accepted precedent, the Senate could take up House-passed tax bills, amend them, and then send the amended legislation back to the House for further consideration.
Liberal Senate leaders, it seems, are determined to do what they want when they want to do it, Constitution or no Constitution. Even unambiguous constitutional requirements such as the Origination Clause are seen... as outdated nuisances that have no business standing in the way of today’s politically inspired “messaging” opportunities.
One of the chief operational principles of the current Senate seems to be, to paraphrase that famous line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: “Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!”
http://www.freep.com/article/20120525/BUSINESS0101/120525023/General-Motors-GM-Dan-Ammann-deal-for-wife?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
General Motors told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today that it failed to report a $600,000 deal given to an advertising agency where the wife of a top GM executive is a partner
(*SMIRK*)
GM said in an SEC filing that it had “recently learned about” a contract awarded in 2011 to an agency where Chief Financial Officer Dan Ammann’s wife, Pernilla Ammann, is chief operating officer and partner.
* FOLKS... THE OLIGARCHY IS NOT A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION.
Dan Ammann received actual compensation of $3.5 million in 2011, including a salary of $750,000.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
http://www.boston.com/business/markets/2012/05/25/declines-cite-china-currency-manipulator/U2UXYC5Py6bnj4aAJRXZwI/story.html
The U.S. government said Friday that China has "made progress" in allowing its currency to rise against the dollar and declined to accuse the nation of manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage.
* THE FIX IS IN... (*SHRUG*)
The decision issued by the Treasury Department Friday should help avert a potential trade dispute. But the department said China’s currency is still undervalued and must rise further against the dollar.
* BUT IF CHINA WASN'T MANIPULATING IT'S CURRENCY, WHY WOULD THE YUAN STILL BE UNDERVALUED...? (*SMIRK*) SOUNDS TO ME LIKE OBAMA'S TREASURY DEPARTMENT - HEADED BY TIM "THE TAX CHEAT" GEITHNER - SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE!
Mitt Romney...has said that he would label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office.
The yuan currently trades within a narrow range against the dollar. Some U.S. manufacturers have urged the administration to take punitive steps to force China to allow the yuan to trade freely.
The United States has urged China to let its currency appreciate for almost a decade. In 2005 China ended its tight peg of the yuan to the dollar and permitted the yuan to trade within a narrow range. Since then, the yuan has appreciated 40% in inflation-adjusted terms, the department said.
* DON'T LET THAT 40% FIGURE UNDULY IMPRESS YOU, FOLKS... (READ ON!)
The U.S. trade deficit with China widened in March, the Commerce Department said earlier this month. The deficit with China this year is on pace to exceed last year’s gap of $295.5 billion, which was an all-time high for any country.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
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