Thursday, December 6, 2012
DeMint Resigning from Senate to Head Heritage Foundation
The Senate is set to lose one of its most influential conservative voices after South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint announced on Thursday that he will step down.
DeMint will take over the Heritage Foundation, and will leave the Senate on December 31.
DeMint, seen as a “kingmaker” with Republican congressional candidates due to his prodigious fundraising abilities, has long said he would not seek a third term in the Senate when his current one runs out in 2016.
But now the Palmetto State’s Republican Gov. Nikki Haley will be faced with appointing a senator who will serve nearly two years in the Upper Chamber before a 2014 election.
Only this week DeMint made headlines when he said House Speaker John Boehner's offer for $800 billion of increased tax revenues would "destroy jobs and allow Washington politicians" to swell, not reduce, federal deficits.
Boehner made the bid in negotiations with Democratic President Barack Obama to avert the $600 billion in taxes and spending cuts that will start to take effect in January if no deal is reached.
DeMint, 61, will take charge of the conservative Washington think tank, which has an annual budget of $80 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. He will replace Ed Feulner as president of the foundation.
He told the Journal he sees the foundation as a way to connect conservative ideas with the general public. "This is an urgent time because we saw in the last election we were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections," he said.
"We want to figure out what works at the local and state level," he added, saying he would then try to adapt them for national elections.
He said no group is “better equipped” than the Heritage Foundation to lead the conservative movement.
More @ Newsmax
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Two Thirds of Millionaires Go Missing in England to Avoid the 50% Tax Rate Hike
Roundabout via Ninety Miles
One might think that the United States would learn from what happened across the Pond.
So President Barack Obama and the Left think that raising taxes n the so-called rich is the answer, eh? Take a good look what happened when the British PM raised taxes on millionaires. Two-thirds of millionaires either left the UK or reduced their taxable income in order to avoid the 50% take rate. The British naively thought they were going to increase revenues by merely increasing the tax rate on millionaires and doing simple math. However, instead of raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue.
VERBATIM
So President Barack Obama and the Left think that raising taxes n the so-called rich is the answer, eh? Take a good look what happened when the British PM raised taxes on millionaires. Two-thirds of millionaires either left the UK or reduced their taxable income in order to avoid the 50% take rate. The British naively thought they were going to increase revenues by merely increasing the tax rate on millionaires and doing simple math. However, instead of raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue.
Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.Think Barack Obama and Democrats could learn from this? Hell no, Obama and Democrats can’t even learn from the government overspending and entitlement program fiasco going on in Greece. Instead Obama continues his class warfare and puts forward the myth that taxing the so-called rich is the answer to all of America’s fiscal ills.
In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.
This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election.
The figures have been seized upon by the Conservatives to claim that increasing the highest rate of tax actually led to a loss in revenues for the Government.
It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.
Obama’s Ineligibility Is Still The Elephant In The Room
There is an elephant in the room, and it is not the Republican Party.
It is the failure of numerous U.S. citizens in positions of authority
to properly vet the qualifications of Barack Hussein Obama and to share
that knowledge with all U.S. citizens.
How so?
He is the only person on earth who currently has to fulfill the Constitutional requirement stated in Article II, Section 1:
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”This statement gives a very short list of the qualifications needed to hold the most powerful elected position in our nation, yet Barack Obama is unable to fulfill the first requirement: He is not a natural born citizen of the United States. Obama declares that his father was from Kenya, thus making him a dual British-U.S. citizen at birth. For over four years, Barack Obama has perpetrated a lie that he is legally eligible to campaign for, be elected to, and hold the office of President of the United States.
Why is Barack Obama ineligible to be President, and how did he still manage to be elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012? The following summary of facts compiled by Paul Hollrah, a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College, explains the matter. In his treatise “The Obama Eligibility Question,” Hollrah informs us that “the ‘natural born’ question rests principally on the necessity of both parents being U.S. citizens.” His conclusion is based on numerous statements related to the drafting of the Constitution’s citizenship requirement in Article II, Section 1 and its subsequent interpretation throughout U.S. history, including as recently as the McCain-Obama election.
First, “the Founders relied heavily on the work of Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel” who “in his 1758 legal treatise, The Law of Nations… defines the term ‘natural born Citizen’ as follows: ‘…The natives, or natural-born citizens are born in the country, of parents who are citizens…The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children…’ (emphasis added).”
Second, “In 1866, John A. Bingham, chief framer of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to the freed slaves, wrote as follows: ‘Every human being born within the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty (emphasis added) is, in the language of the Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.’”
Third, in the only defining precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court (Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) the Court concludes, “’At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.’”
Fourth, in 2008, former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson (a conservative Republican) and Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe (a liberal Democrat) were tasked with researching whether Senator John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone,) is a natural born citizen. “In a March 19, 2008 memorandum, Olson and Tribe concluded that, ‘Based on original meaning of the Constitution, the Framers’ intentions, and subsequent legal and historical precedent, Sen. McCain’s birth, to parents who were U.S. citizens serving on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, makes him a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution.’”
Fifth, “…in an April 10, 2008 statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, ‘Based on the understanding of the pertinent sources of constitutional meaning, it is widely believed that if someone is born to American citizens anywhere in the world they are natural born citizens. Because he was born to American citizens, there is no doubt in my mind that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen (emphasis added).”
And finally, in April 20, 2008 a Senate resolution approved by a vote of 99-0 (Senator John McCain abstaining) declared: “’Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘natural born citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.’ Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) voted in favor of the resolution.”Now that we know the meaning of “natural born citizen,” let’s get back to the question of Barack Obama’s citizenship at birth.
More @ Freedom Outpost
Tossing Susan Rice Under The Bus
Trying to make some sense of the Susan Rice fiasco is like trying to
make some sense of how the most incompetent and the most corrupt
presidential candidate in American history managed to get himself
reelected. It probably can’t be done. But, just for the sake of
argument, it might be interesting to engage in a bit of conjecture about
how Susan Rice got picked to go under the bus.
The tale that Rice told at each stop was typical of what she stated on ABC’s This Week, where she said, “Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo… In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather – to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”
So the question arises… and persists… why was the U.N. Ambassador chosen to deliver such a whopper to the American people when, in fact, she had no connection to and no responsibility for the consulate in Benghazi?
The most logical pecking order of people who should have been called upon to answer for what happened at Benghazi is, in order of importance: Barack Obama, President and Commander in Chief; Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State; Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense; General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence; Michael Morrell, Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor; and General David Petraeus, former Director of Central Intelligence.
As the principal architect and political beneficiary of the Benghazi fable, Barack Obama was not about to go on record as the bearer of what everyone would soon know was a false narrative. But because he had hopes of explaining away the Benghazi terror attack in a way that would not damage his “al-Qaeda-is-on-its-heels” narrative two months before the November election, he had to have a patsy to carry his tale to the American people who was not only credible, but also expendable. The one person who fit that description was U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. And who is the only person who could make that decision, and who is the only person who could tell her exactly what to do and what to say? Ambassador Rice is not in Hillary Clinton’s chain of command, so the order could have come from only one person: that would be Barack Obama.
More @ Freedom Outpost
Your federal tax dollars are being used to prepare for the zombie apocalypse
Via Bill
The above film clip is not a “behind the scenes” of the latest Dawn
of the Dead straight-to-DVD ripoff. It is the actual footage of first
responder seminar in San Diego, California. The Department of Homeland
Security deemed the event an allowable expense, enabling participants to
use federal grant funding to pay to go.
That’s according to “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities” a report compiled by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who chairs the investigations subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The report focuses on grants made by the DHS and the Urban Areas Security Initiative. Coburn says the report shows that DHS was “directing scarce dollars to low-priority project and low-risk areas.”
Coburn found that, among other things, DHS was spending money on teaching first responders how to stop flesh-eating ghouls. The report said the event was held by the HALO Corporation “at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on an island outside San Diego 9 (and) the 5-day summit was deemed an allowable expense by DHS, permitting first responders to use grant funds for the $1,000 entrance fee.”
Coburn’s report explained further:
That’s according to “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities” a report compiled by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who chairs the investigations subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The report focuses on grants made by the DHS and the Urban Areas Security Initiative. Coburn says the report shows that DHS was “directing scarce dollars to low-priority project and low-risk areas.”
Coburn found that, among other things, DHS was spending money on teaching first responders how to stop flesh-eating ghouls. The report said the event was held by the HALO Corporation “at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on an island outside San Diego 9 (and) the 5-day summit was deemed an allowable expense by DHS, permitting first responders to use grant funds for the $1,000 entrance fee.”
Coburn’s report explained further:
More @ The Examiner
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