“This is what President Obama would call a “teachable moment”. The teachable moment here is when we elect a president who brings this progressive philosophy to bear to government, they decide how our rights are to be granted and given and organized. And if they clash with our first amendment right of religious freedom or something else then we know who wins in that exchange. This is much much bigger than about contraception or something like that, this is about religious freedom, first amendment rights, and how this progressive philosophy of fungible rights or a living, breathing constitution really clashes and collides with these core rights that we built our society and country around,”.
Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “New government data shows profits for America’s largest financial firms are once again reaching record highs not seen sense before the financial crisis of 2008. In fact, Wall Street firms have earned more in the first two and a half years of the Obama presidency than all 8 years of the Bush presidency. Over 85 billion dollars in profits compared to 77 billion.”
Joe Scarborough: “Wait — you mean in the first two years they made more than in eight years than in the Bush administration?”
Brzezinski: “That’s correct.”
The facts are that while Obama claims to be against Wall Street and is a champion of the poor against the rich, he is in Wall Street’s back pocket. The Dodd-Frank bill and these other regulations passed in the name of defending the poor, actually tilt the playing field to his donors, expend the power of the federal government to pick winners and losers and Lord help you if you are a part of the smaller competition. I explored this subject for years in great detail on my old college blog.
Related:
Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.
Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.
Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.
Hypocrite! Elizabeth Warren Takes Wall Street Cash! – LINK.
Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts – LINK.
The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why? – LINK.
The latest taxpayer-funded boondoggle to emerge from the Obama Administration’s infamous Energy Department grant and loan program has cost taxpayers $118.5 million, new bankruptcy filings by electric battery maker Ener1 reveal.
From Bloomberg News:
The company listed assets of $73.9 million and debt of $90.5 million as of Dec. 31 in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Ener1 has been affected by competing battery developers in China and South Korea, “which generally have a lower cost manufacturing base” and lower labor and raw material costs, interim Chief Executive Officer Alex Sorokin said in the petition.
Like Solyndra, Ener1 was a company touted by President Obama as being a shining example of his vision for taxpayer-subsidized clean energy.
The day following President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address, Vice President Joe Biden toured Ener1’s lithium-ion battery system manufacturing facility in Greenfield, Indiana and said:
As you heard President Obama say last night, this Administration is forging a new path forward by making sure America doesn’t just lead in the 21st Century, but dominates in the 21st Century. We’re not just creating new jobs-but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come-industries like electric vehicle manufacturing.
Ener1’s EnerDel unit, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, likewise received a Solyndra-style shout out from Mr. Obama during a 2009 swing through Indiana. During his remarks, Mr. Obama said:
See, I’m committed to a strategy that ensures America leads in the design and the deployment of the next generation of clean-energy vehicles. This is not just an investment to produce vehicles today; this is an investment in our capacity to develop new technologies tomorrow. This is about creating the infrastructure of innovation.
Indiana is the second largest recipient of grant funding, and it’s a perfect example of what this will mean. You’ve got Purdue University, Notre Dame, Indiana University, and Ivy Tech, and they’re all going to be receiving grant funding to develop degree and training programs for electric vehicles. That’s number one. We’ve got EnerDel, a small business in Indianapolis that will develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Now, in the wake of the Dec. 31st bankruptcy filing, Mr. Obama used his 2012 State of the Union Address to make it clear he intends to double down, not reverse course, from his decision to use taxpayer dollars to prop up clean energy companies that are too weak to compete and thrive on their own:
Payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.
Our good friend Tamara De Silva has written a series of articles on the MF Global scandal. In her latest piece Tamara presents the information “in English” so that regular folks who are not in the industry can understand it.
This is one of the MUST READ pieces of the year. Here is a teaser:
….a possible conflict of interest between Jon Corzine [former NJ Governor and Democrat Bundler] and Mr. Gensler [CFTC Chairman] based upon their friendship, and a common political and professional involvement. What follows is a laundry list of connections-the applicability to MF Global comes later. For starters, Jon Corzine was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs during part of the eighteen years that Gary Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Gensler donated $10,000 to Corzine’s campaign for governor of New Jersey. They worked together in Congress when Corzine was a Senator and Mr. Gensler a Senate aide. They worked closely together drafting large portions of the investor protection act, Sarbanes Oxley, while Corzine served on the Senate Banking Committee.
More…
In 2010, Corzine invited Gensler to lecture at Princeton about financial regulation and Gensler also spoke to the audience assembled about his friendship with Corzine. Gensler donated $300,000 to the prominent Democratic candidates including President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Corzine has been one of President Obama’s elite bundlers, this past April 2011, alone holding an exclusive fundraiser from his Manhattan apartment where he was able to pass the hat around for more than $500,000. Gensler authored much of the Dodd-Frank Act and analysts like Sandler and O’Neill Partners wrote that they expected Corzine’s contacts in Washington as he took over as CEO of MF Global in 2010 to help him “navigates a shifting regulatory environment.”
Hmmm I wonder if the CFTC will have the ability to put service before self and investigate their own boss? After what we have already seen in the Obama Administration I am not holding my breath.
With so many of thee green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a fund raiser who is an owner in a “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.
Related:
Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!) – LINK
CBS: Obama Admin knew green energy boondoggles were politically motivated – LINK
Whopping Lies: New Obama ad defends energy policy, Solyndra – LINK
I was asked the question in the title so I thought I would provide a short answer with some supporting evidence.
Socialists like Soros are not truly into socialism, they are into control. Envy is the tool and socialism is the vehicle that he and people like him use.
There are essentially three kinds of socialists:
The Control Freak: We are the ruling elite and are born to rule. Follow me and stay out of my way or else…
The Utopian: The Utopian wants to create a perfect society which is impossible. The more they tighten their grip the more slips through their fingers. When Utopians come into power they often lose that naivete and become control freaks.
The Sucker: Those who have swallowed the envy narrative. They see someone else get taxed or punished who has more and that makes them feel better in spite of the fact that they are not better off for it and are in fact, worse off. Why? Because envy corrupts the spirit and the thought process. There are 37% fewer millionaires in the country now than when Obama got elected. If this is all about redistribution of wealth let me ask you – how much of that money did you get?
Obama while giving a speech to Google blasted the Chamber of Commerce for opposing a raise in the top marginal tax rate to 39.9% because millionaires and billionaires weren’t paying their fair share.
Google paid 2.4% federal tax on 3.1 billion in income. Google doesn’t pay the top marginal rate – small to medium sized businesses called “S-Corps” do.
Google pays the corporate rate and has the influence to get favors in the 60,000 page tax code. Google also makes money overseas and chooses not to repatriate the profits.
Raising the top marginal tax rate doesn’t effect millionaires and billionaires because by and large they do not pay that tax, but small businesses would get soaked. Google and GE pay next to nothing and small to medium domestic business pays 39.9% (albeit with some deductions). This is how President Obama and the leadership of his party define fairness. Now you have just figured out why the largest Wall Street outfits and many other mega-corporations donate to Democrats in such numbers over Republicans.
Hence Norton’s First Law: Big Business loves big government because big government taxes and regulates the small and medium sized domestic competition out of the competition.
The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why? – LINK
Related:
George Soros and Warren Buffet benefited from Obama Keystone Pipeline Veto – LINK.
The Democratic Party’s largest single contributors will make money off of the country losing hundreds of thousands of jobs with President Obama killing the Keystone Oil Pipeline from Canada.
Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world’s richest men get richer. North Dakota’s booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president’s economic guru just bought.
Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off the pristine beaches of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
As he was imposing curbs and moratoria on U.S. offshore drillers, President Obama wished the Brazilians well in the hope we would someday be Brazil’s best oil customer.
Apparently, oil tankers coming from Brazil are better and safer than a pipeline from Canada, whose best customer we will not be if they ship their tar sands oil to China instead.
Interestingly, another billionaire, Obama economic inspiration Warren Buffett, stands to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline delay.
As oil production ramps up in the Bakken fields of North Dakota, plans to use the pipeline to transport it have been dashed.
As a result, North Dakota’s booming oil producers will have to rely even more on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, which Buffett just bought, to ship it to refineries.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Berkshire Hathaway already owns about 22% of Burlington Northern, and will pay $100 a share in cash and stock for the rest of the company.
Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.
It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.
Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24th and 25th as the stimulus plan was being crafted. Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.
Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.
Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009. Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million
In Throw Them All Out, Schweizer catalogs several more of Mr. Soros’s trades and says that, while “it is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’s “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.”
This study from the Beacon Hill (Economics) Institute at Suffolk University illuminates the disastrous results of the failed experiment known as RomneyCare and yet presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues to stand by the program.
Here are the key findings from the Beacon Hill study:
The High Price of Massachusetts Health Care Reform
• State health care expenditures have risen by $414 million over the period;
• Private health insurance costs have risen by $4.311 billion over the period;
• The federal government has spent an additional $2.418 billion on Medicaid for Massachusetts.
• Over this period, Medicare expenditures increased by $1.426 billion;
• For a total cumulative cost of $8.569 billion over the period; and
• The state has been able to shift the majority of the costs to the federal government.
The federal government continues to absorb a significant cost of health care reform through enhanced Medicaid payments and the Medicare program. Health care reform has also increased the rate for Medicare Advantage plans in Massachusetts, which has contributed to an increase in Medicare health care expenditures through prices for medical service delivery.
This is not defendable.
It gets worse. The Beacon Hill Institute did a fraud study to determine how the RomneyCare system is being “gamed”:
Massachusetts Health Care Reform Mandates: The Gaming Gamble
The law requires that individuals with sufficient means purchase health insurance and that businesses with more than ten employees make a “fair and reasonable” contribution toward their employees’ health insurance. Under the law, health insurance companies cannot refuse to cover individuals with preexisting conditions. Individuals and businesses face fines if they fail to comply with the mandates.
Because the fines imposed by the law cost are often less than the cost of insurance, the law is vulnerable to the problem of moral hazard.
Individuals can game the mandate by buying insurance only upon being diagnosed as needing a non‐emergency procedure such as a hip replacement and then canceling their insurance after receiving the treatment or procedure. Businesses can likewise game the mandate by canceling their health insurance plans and shifting their employees to newly subsidized state plans. Massachusetts taxpayers and health insurance policyholders pick up the tab for these “jumpers and dumpers.”
The Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) has estimated the prevalence and cost of gaming the mandates. We find that:
• In tax year 2008 (the latest data available) 26,000 individuals paid a total of $16 million in fines, while 758 businesses paid $7.1 million.
• In 2009, between 2,089 and 2,659 individuals gamed the individual mandate at an estimated cost to insurance carriers of between $29.3 million and $37.3 million.
• Between June 2006 and June 2010 enrollment in state subsidized insurance plans increased by 319,000, while the private group (employer) market was flat and the individual market increased by 83,000.
In essence, the incentives in RomneyCare, just as in ObamaCare, are backwards. They encourage people to behave in ways that maximize costs and inefficiency. This is what economists refer to as an “Adverse Selection Spiral”. Eventually the system collapses under the weight of its own costs and inefficiency.
UPDATE – Thomas Zaleski adds:
Wouldn’t it be great if you could purchase AUTO insurance AFTER you had an accident? That is PRECISELY what Romney care is. Break a leg, BUY insurance the SAME day!
Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.
Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.
By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.
Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.
Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.
Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.
I thought Elizabeth Warren was all about transparency. We are all still waiting for her to file the required financial disclosure form.
The Oklahoma Professor has been criticizing Scott Brown for being “Wall Street’s favorite Senator.” She has also denounced “Wall Street cash in politics.”
But it turns out she may be indirectly accepting Wall Street money. The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is helping the Harvard Professor, has taken over $40 million from Wall Street during the last 7 years according to records from OpenSecrets.org. In fact, Wall Street is the biggest contributors to them. They beat lawyers and labor union[s]. Just during this election season the DSCC has already received $1.5 million from Wall Street.
If Lizzy Warden is truly opposed to Wall Street money, then shouldn’t she reject the DSCC’s money? Otherwise she is just using the DSCC to funnel in Wall Street money.
Via Human Events:
According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2008 Obama campaign received $12.6 million from Wall Street “Securities and Investment” firms versus McCain’s $7.9 million
The top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan
Employees of Lehman Brothers alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)
Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.
A Democratic fundraiser was found guilty Friday of engineering a $21 million bank fraud scheme.
Courtney Dupree was convicted of vastly overstating the billings of his Long Island City-based lighting company GDC Acquisitions in order to fraudulently obtain a loan from Amalgamated Bank.
Dupree, 42, sat stone-faced as the verdict was read in Brooklyn Federal Court. He faces up to 30 years in prison and has to pay back at least $18 million.
President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.
“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed,” announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. “The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan.” The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly “will focus solely on how it could affect forest land,” despite the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, “and not how it could affect groundwater.”
Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling “could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,” even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation which this study does not affect.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015. [Update: the USDA estimates that the creation of only a few dozen to 200 jobs will be delayed by this study.]
“The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production,” House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. “It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil.”
Welcome to yet another episode if Chicago style machine politics brought to DC by the Daley Machine Obama Administration. Lately we have seen one “Solyndra” after another.
Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force Space Command,
told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.
Republicans have raised questions about whether the project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.
Solyndra II? At a classified briefing, head of the Air Force Space Command Gen. William Shelton informed House members that he had been pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in order to better compliment a Virginia-based satellite and communications company funded by major Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The GOP has been wondering for some time now whether work done by that company, LightSquared, has been “unduly expedited” by the Obama administration in its push for nation-wide wireless network upgrades.
As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.
Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.”
Many cases of more of the same. Of course another aspect of this story is that it is the view of this editor that the military’s reliance on GPS is a mistake. GPS jamming technology is cheap and easy to make or buy. In fact. most anyone with a little electronics and ham radio training could make one with ease. It is almost a certainty that potential targets of US missiles and smart bombs such as Iran have installed these jamming devices around their country.
Why? Because the State Dental Association used it’s political muscle to get a law passed to criminalize the competition. This is what government does when it gets too powerful and the money gets too fast and loose. So the Institute for Justice is suing in federal court. They made this video to mock the state for this boneheaded maneuver:
Lisa Martinez was forced to shut down her businesses or face five years in prison. Her crime? Teeth whitening.
In 2008, Lisa opened Connecticut White Smile in the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Conn., where she sold an over-the-counter whitening product and provided a clean, comfortable place for customers to apply the product to their own teeth, just as they would at home.
As it turns out, teeth-whitening services are popular and increasingly available at spas, salons and shopping malls all across the country. People are so eager to use these services because they provide great results at a fraction of the cost that dentists charge.
As Lisa puts it:
My customers loved my convenient location and affordable prices. Owning my own business gave me a flexible schedule that allowed me to spend more time with my family.
Unfortunately, as happens all too often, happy customers + happy entrepreneurs = unhappy special interests.
In June, the Connecticut Dental Commission decided to clamp down on teeth whitening. The commission ruled that offering teeth-whitening services is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison or $25,000 in civil penalties for anyone but a licensed dentist.
The ruling even applies to businesses like Lisa’s Connecticut Smile White, where customers apply the product to their own teeth. Some people may be wondering: What’s the difference between whitening my teeth at home with a product I buy online and whitening my teeth at a shopping mall or salon with an identical product? Remarkably, in Connecticut the difference is that the shopping mall and salon entrepreneurs can be thrown in prison for five years.
Thankfully, economic-liberty expert Paul Sherman of the Institute for Justice has teamed up with Lisa and other Connecticut entrepreneurs to change that. This week IJ filed a federal lawsuit to end Connecticut’s government-enforced teeth-whitening cartel. Paul explains:
The Dental Commission’s new teeth-whitening law has nothing to do with public health or safety and everything to do with protecting licensed dentists from honest competition. Rather than trying to compete by lowering prices or improving their services, the dental cartel is using government power to put their competition out of business. That’s unconstitutional. And that’s why we’re taking the dental cartel to federal court.
President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official.
It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out.
The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle.
Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.
From an objective vantage point, investing taxpayer monies in BrightSource was a risky proposition at the time. In 2010, BrightSource, whose largest shareholder is Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, was up to its eyes in $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million on its paltry $13.5 million of revenue.
Even before BrightSource rattled its tin cup in front of Obama’s DOE, the company made it known publicly that its survival hinged on successfully completing the Ivanpah Solar Electrical System, which would become the largest solar plant in the world, on federal lands in California.
In its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, BrightSource further underscored the risky nature of the Ivanpah venture and, more broadly, the company’s viability:
Our future success depends on our ability to construct Ivanpah, our first utility-scale solar thermal power project, in a cost-effective and timely manner… Our ability to complete Ivanpah and the planning, development and construction of all three phases are subject to significant risk and uncertainty.
Ironically, in 2008, Kennedy wrote a CNN article praising Obama as reminiscent of his famous father and uncle. The article, titled “Obama’s Energy Plan Would Create a Green Gold Rush,” proved prophetic. However, the “green gold rush” came in the form of $1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money flowing into the pet projects of rich venture capital investors like Kennedy, not average citizens.
This video is remarkable to see for those who are not trained in how Washington works. The first millionaire in the video says that their group got rich because of the deficit spending done in Washington, so lets raise taxes [so that the government can do more spending and you same greedy bastards can get even wealthier by sucking at the government tit while donating some of that money back to Obama]. The people at Solyndra and these other green energy companies that donated heavily to Obama took our money, paid themselves, donated to Democrats and promptly went out of business.
Washington — Two dozen “patriotic millionaires” traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday to demand that Congress raise taxes on wealthy Americans.
The Daily Caller attended their press conference with an iPad, which displayed the Treasury Department’s donation page, to find out if any of the “patriotic millionaires” were willing to put their money where their mouth is.
And indeed it is perfectly legal. This is what you get when you have a 60,000 page tax code filled with loopholes (some justified some not), favors, cronyism and every incentive there can be to make money overseas instead of at home because we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. So how can we have the highest rate in the world and this still happens? You are about to find out and it involves putting Americans out of work to do it.
General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.
The fact that GE paid no taxes in 2010 was widely reported earlier this year, but the size of its tax return first came to light when House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) made the case for corporate tax reform at a recent townhall meeting. “GE was able to utilize all of these various loopholes, all of these various deductions–it’s legal,” Ryan said. Nine billion dollars of GE’s profits came overseas, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. tax law. GE wasn’t taxed on $5 billion in U.S. profits because it utilized numerous deductions and tax credits, including tax breaks for investments in low-income housing, green energy, research and development, as well as depreciation of property.
“I asked the GE tax officer, ‘How long was your tax form?'” Ryan said. “He said, ‘Well, we file electronically, we don’t measure in pages.'” Ryan asked for an estimate, which came back at a stunning 57,000 pages. When Ryan relayed the story at the townhall meeting in Janesville, there were audible gasps from the crowd.
Ken Kies, a tax lawyer who represents GE, confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD the tax return would have been 57,000 pages had it been filed on paper. The size of GE’s tax return has more than doubled in the last five years.
Ryan used the data point to underscore the irrationality of the corporate income tax code. He also contrasted GE with UPS to make the point that the corporate income tax code doesn’t make sense. “UPS paid a 34 percent effective tax rate,” while its biggest foreign competitor, DHL, paid a 24 percent tax rate, Ryan said.
The problems with the corporate taxes occur because “Republicans and Democrats, both parties, sit in Congress and they’re picking winners and losers,” Ryan said. The solution, according to the Wisconsin congressman: “Get rid of those loopholes and lower tax rates by a corresponding amount. Don’t lose revenue, but for every loophole you pull out, and deny a company from being able to get this little carveout, you can lower the rates so we can be more competitive with our competitors overseas. We want to stem the bleeding of jobs going overseas, of foreign companies buying U.S. companies and taking headquarters overseas.”
Boehner goes nuclear when he finds out that language was illegally inserted into the bill giving the AIG execs big bonuses with our money. This goes all the way back to the language in the failed Stimulus Bill.
This is the speech that Leader Boehner was referencing in the beginning of the video above
ABC’s World News on Wednesday and Good Morning America on Thursday both reported on the revelation that Newt Gingrich received almost $2 million while consulting for Freddie Mac over an eight year span.
Yet, the network ignored the fact that the company (with a Democratic President) is still giving massive bonuses and will now be asking the federal government for an additional $6 billion.
On World News, Jon Karl highlighted only the Gingrich connection, highlighting attacks by Michele Bachmann.
Yet, while ABC focused on this, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell explained, “So, here’s what set off the latest round of outrage. $13 million in bonuses for the two mortgage giants that had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Now these bonuses come after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually lost $4 billion last quarter.”
So, while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell offered snarky comments, such as insisting that Gingrich is “trying to explain his gold platted, insider status,” at least NBC allowed that the company still had issues, separate from their relation to GOP presidential candidates.
On CBS’s Evening News, Wyatt Andrews noted the “bipartisan anger” from Republicans and Democrats over the latest news.
Speaking of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae CEOs, Andrews added, “Fannie’s Michael Williams and Freddie’s Charles Haldeman, earned $9.3 million and $7.8 million over two years, which gives them, Republican Darrell Issa said, the best taxpayer-financed jobs ever.”
On Thursday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford mentioned the congressional investigation during a Gingrich segment. GMA only focused on the Republican presidential candidate. NBC’s Today did the same.
A transcript of the Evening News segment can be found HERE
The Obama administration has repeatedly said job creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations.
“We have not directly taken a look at jobs in the proposal,” Stanislaus said, referring to a regulation that would govern industries that recycle coal ash and other fossil fuel byproducts.
Coal ash is commonly used to make concrete stronger and longer lasting, make wallboard more durable and improve the quality of roofing shingles.
Stanislaus made his comments in response to questioning by Colorado GOP Rep. Cory Gardner looking into whether the EPA is complying with a recent presidential executive order and considering jobs in its regulatory regime. The EPA issued a April 30, 2010 statement in the appendix of its regulatory impact analysis for proposed regulation under the Resources and Recovery Act (RCRA) of coal ash.
That statement said: “The [regulatory impact assessment] does not include either qualitative or quantitative estimation of the potential effects of the proposed rule on economic productivity, economic growth, employment, job creation or international economic competitiveness.”
The statement contradicts Executive Order 13563, which President Obama signed in January requiring rules to take job creation into account when federal agencies issue new rules.
Gardner pressed Stanislaus as to whether or not EPA had done a direct economic analysis on how the rule would affect jobs, to which Stanislaus replied saying that EPA had not included jobs in its cost-benefit analysis of the rule.
“Do you feel an economic analysis that does not include the complete picture on jobs, is that a full economic analysis?” Gardner asked. “I think it is really a yes or no question.
“To me, I don’t see how you can talk about economic analysis without talking about jobs… and you said that you would not promulgate a rule where the costs would exceed the benefits,” Gardner continued. “But if you are not taking into account jobs, I don’t see how that goes.”
Gardner’s line of questioning had Stanislaus visibly dumbfounded, and he repeatedly told the congressman he would have to get back to him with the answers to his questions.
Fiscally responsible states usually ran by Republicans and Conservative Democrats gained 10 House seats according to Census data.
People are voting with their feet. Over 150 businesses left California to move to Texas in just the last year. Missouri may now be changing to a “right to work state”. Union over reach and greed has sent jobs overseas. Ford Motor Company has a new high-tech plant that can make five cars on a single line at once. Union rules do not permit the advanced technology Ford needs so they have built these plants in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Union over reach in the public sector (government unions) is causing some states to go bankrupt. The states cannot afford the corruption and sweetheart deals that result from abusive public sector unions.
Keep in mind this is census data from late 2010, so one would imagine that the situation is more pronounced today.
[And as is so often the case, when there is a video that is popular with conservative bloggers YouTube makes it go poof. The video can be watched HERE]
I have repeatedly talked about “Consolidation” as Obama’s economic theory. Dick Morris is on Sean Hannity right now saying that Obama wants to have one big union, one big corporation in each industry, along with one big government. He is describing Obama’s merging of Corporatism and Socialism. “The left voted for socialism and got Goldman Sachs” says Morris.
Anyone mind of I just gloat for a moment /wink. I started saying this well over a year ago on my old college blog. We try to always bring you the cutting edge.
This is neo-corporatist corruption in its Chicago style glory.
GE, which owned NBC and MSNBC, benefited with its relationship with the Democratic Leadership. GE has also had other ethical problems which are pointed out in the video. Of course noth NBC and MSNBC abandoned serious news reporting long ago and chose a path of highly biased and unfair reporting on one side, to nightly lies and character assassination on the other.
This leads us to another opportunity to remind you all of Norton’s First Law:
Big business loves big government, which is why big business loves domestic taxes and regulation because it keeps the small and medium sized competition out of the competition. It also causes inflation, so ultimately it is you who pays and the poor who are hardest hit. (Big business often gets loopholes written in the laws for themselves such as Nancy Pelosi trying to get a part of the tuna industry exempted from the minimum wage law).
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 