Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties?

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:29 PM PST

By: Colleen Owens, BigGovernment.com

In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various local Tea Parties across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have reached Tea Parties in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas (we are hearing of more daily). There are several common threads to these letters: all are requesting more information from these independent Tea Parties in regard to their nonprofit 501(c)(4) applications (for this type of nonprofit, donations are not deductible). While some of the requests are reasonable, much of them are strikingly onerous and, dare I say, Orwellian in nature.

What are local Tea Partiers to think with requests like "Please identify your volunteers" or "are there board members or officers who have run or will run for office (including relatives)"? What possible reason would the IRS have for Tea Parties to "name your donors" when said donations are non-deductible? These are just a few of the questions asked by the IRS in these letters, and one cannot help but suspect an intrinsic threat encompassing all these demands.

The other question is the timing of these IRS letters requesting reams of copies and hundreds of hours of work and potentially thousands of dollars in accounting/legal fees (all due in two weeks). Some of these Tea Party groups have not received anything concerning their nonprofit status since 2010 prior to these letters.

These documents are further undermined by a letter sent to the IRS Commissioner Shulman. Signed by six Senators, it requests that the commissioner investigate 501(c)(4) groups to determine whether they are engaging in substantial campaign activity, including opposition to any candidate. Who signed this letter? Senators Schumer, Franken, Udall, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Merkley and Bennet — all Democrats.

Could it be that these Senators want the IRS to investigate the nonprofit status of Media Matters and its coordinated political activity with the White House? Or perhaps they are concerned with nonprofit ACORN groups' record of voter fraud, and other previous campaign abuses including alleged close ties with President Obama's Project Vote? No, when these Senators sent this letter to the IRS commissioner, the message would be very clear. The 501(c)(4) groups they want investigated are not those with Democratic liberal ties.

But why would a department like the IRS cave to Democrat demands? Could it be because this Democratic administration proposed a budget earlier this month that would result in "$1.1 billion in new funds for the Internal Revenue Service… that would translate to 5,112 new hires, or a 5 percent expansion of enforcement operations"? Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, couldn't contain her glee at the prospect of over 5,000 new union hires, exclaiming in response to the announcement that "the administration's 2012 funding level for the IRS would permit the agency to improve services through increasing response rates to inquiries, deploying enforcement resources to what the White House called high-return integrity activities and by modernizing information technology systems."

The IRS is already focusing on "deploying enforcement resources," as Kelley put it, toward targeting small, local Tea Parties; we're sorry to report that these "high-return integrity activities" are generating a higher fear factor, not necessarily higher returns.

To read more, visit:  http://biggovernment.com/cowens/2012/02/27/is-the-irs-attempting-to-intimidate-local-tea-parties/

Buffett: Banks Victimized by Evicted Homeowners

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:26 PM PST

By Andrew Frye, Bloomberg.com

Warren Buffett, who controls the biggest shareholding of the No. 1 U.S. mortgage lender, said banks were victimized by some homeowners who refinanced their loans before getting evicted.

"Large numbers of people who have 'lost' their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost," Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said Feb. 25 in his annual letter. "In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender."

Foreclosures have claimed about 5 million homes since the property market began its slide in 2006. That has saddled lenders like Bank of America Corp. with defaults, vacated properties and lawsuits. Berkshire, whose stake in Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the largest U.S. mortgage lender, is valued at more than $11 billion, invested $5 billion in Bank of America last year.

"It's the mercenary side of Buffett," said Jeff Matthews, a Berkshire shareholder and author of "Secrets in Plain Sight: Business & Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett." "Rationally, it's an interesting observation. But it ignores the huge human- cost side of the equation."

Buffett, who publicly defended Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2010 against accusations it misled clients, used the letter to renew his support for banks. The industry is facing criticism from Democrats including President Barack Obama, who in his January State of the Union address said bets by lenders prompted the 2008 credit freeze and "left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag."

'Enough With the Lambasting'

Buffett, an ally of Obama's, has won praise from Democratic lawmakers as the billionaire campaigned for higher taxes on the wealthy. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire owns warrants to purchase $5 billion of stock in New York-based Goldman Sachs.

To read more, visit:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-27/buffett-says-banks-victimized-by-evicted-homeowners-who-emerged-as-winners.html

NYPD surveillance of students called ‘disgusting’

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:23 PM PST

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press

At Columbia University and elsewhere, the fear that the New York Police Department might secretly be infiltrating Muslim students’ lives has spread beyond them to others who find the reported tactics “disgusting,” as one teenager put it.

The NYPD surveillance of Muslims on a dozen college campuses in the Northeast is a surprising and disappointing violation, students said Saturday in reaction to Associated Press reports that revealed the intelligence-gathering at Columbia and elsewhere.

“If this is happening to innocent Muslim students, who’s next?” asked freshman Dina Morris, 18, of Amherst, Mass. “I’m the child of an immigrant, and I was just blown away by the news; it’s disgusting.”

Documents obtained by the AP show that the NYPD used undercover officers and informants to infiltrate Muslim student groups. An officer even went whitewater rafting with students and reported on how many times they prayed and what they discussed. Police also trawled college websites and blogs, compiling daily reports on the activities of Muslim students and academics.

It was all part of the NYPD’s efforts to keep tabs on Muslims throughout the region as part of the department’s anti-terrorism efforts. Police built databases of where Muslims lived and worked, where they prayed, even where they watched sports.

In the past week, Muslims and non-Muslims alike held a town hall meeting on the Manhattan campus of the Ivy League college to discuss the police surveillance. Concerned members of many school groups attended.

To read more, visit:  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NYPD_INTELLIGENCE_UNIVERSITIES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-26-09-03-22

WikiLeaks publishes security think tank emails

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:19 PM PST

From: Reuters.com

The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks began publishing on Monday more than five million emails from a U.S.-based global security analysis company that has been likened to a shadow CIA.

The emails, snatched by hackers, could unmask sensitive sources and throw light on the murky world of intelligence-gathering by the company known as Stratfor, which counts Fortune 500 companies among its subscribers.

Stratfor in a statement shortly after midnight EST (0500 GMT) said the release of its stolen emails was an attempt to silence and intimidate it.

It said it would not be cowed under the leadership of George Friedman, Stratfor’s founder and chief executive officer. It said Friedman had not resigned as CEO, contrary to a bogus email circulating on the Internet.

Some of the emails being published “may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic,” the company statement said.

“We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them,” the statement said.

WikiLeaks did not say how it had acquired access to the vast haul of internal and external correspondence of the Austin, Texas company, formally known as Strategic Forecasting Inc.

To read more, visit:  http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/27/wikileaks-stratfor-idINDEE81Q02020120227

N.D. Tea Party debate skipped by top GOP candidates

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:17 PM PST

By: Kristen M. Daum, GrandForksHerald.com

Tonight will be the last scheduled debate for candidates in North Dakota's top races prior to the state nominating conventions in March.

But with several high-profile contenders from both parties not attending, less than half of the invited candidates will face their competition on stage.

At least one participant is calling out his opponent's absence, prompting a campaign issue over candidates' willingness to debate in front of their party's base of support.

Today's event is the second of two debate nights organized by the North Dakota Tea Party Caucus and a coalition of more than a dozen conservative-leaning organizations.

It begins with a half-hour pre-show at 6 p.m. at Fargo's Best Western Doublewood Inn, 3333 13th Ave. S.

As with the first event in Bismarck last month, the caucus aimed to have three one-hour debates for the U.S. House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

But two key Republicans and all Democratic candidates have once again declined to participate, forcing a change in the debate format.

Of the 15 candidates invited, nine candidates will attend, but two will address the audience unopposed.

To read more, visit:  http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/230505/

Ayn Rand Beats Out Rick Santelli as First Teapartyer

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:13 PM PST

By: Gary Weiss, SFGate.com

The origins of the Tea Party are usually traced to Rick Santelli’s televised rant, which took place on Feb. 19, 2009 — by coincidence exactly 83 years to the day after Ayn Rand first set foot on American soil. A few anti- tax, anti-government rallies preceded the Santelli tirade, but he and his immediate predecessors usually get the nod for originating the movement.

I beg to differ. Ayn Rand was the very first person on the national political stage to enunciate views that mesh precisely with the ones being bandied about by the Tea Party. Rand was channeling the Tea Party decades before there even was a Tea Party.

In 1964, she gave a radio interview that could have been broadcast today, in which she perfectly captured the angst of 21st-century right-leaning populists. It’s doubtful that Rand would have supported the Tea Party movement if she were living today. That wasn’t her style. But it’s important to distinguish between Rand’s ideology and her knee-jerk opposition to any movement whose views might have competed with her own.

‘Little Sympathy’

In a 1971 newsletter article, she expressed disdain for groups — similar to today’s Tea Party, though far smaller — that opposed the United Nations, foreign aid, international treaties, relations with communist countries, federal aid to education, and the income tax. She disparaged them as “primitive patriotic groups,” even while agreeing with most of their ideas. “Personally,” she said, “I have little sympathy with such groups because they do not know how to uphold their ideas intellectually, because they rush unarmed and unprepared into a deadly battle and do more harm than good to the rightist cause.”

She was right. Such groups faded into the mists of history without having much impact. The Tea Party is different. It has latched on to the disdain for government that is common in the heartland, and seems to have an almost psychic connection to the grand old lady of radical capitalism.

The most dramatic evidence of that can be found in an interview that she gave to a small chain of radio stations, probably in October 1964. Tapes of this interview, and another one from 1962, were in the possession of a friend and colleague of mine: the investigative reporter Richard Behar. Behar got them in the 1980s from iconic broadcaster Gordon McLendon — a pioneer of the Top 40 hits format — and they have resided in a succession of closets ever since.

Throughout the 1962 broadcast, Rand expressed contempt for the Kennedy administration. She called it “fascist” for exerting pressure on the steel industry to roll back prices. Five decades later, a U.S. president wouldn’t even think about injecting himself into the affairs of a major industry, except to step in with billions of dollars to keep it afloat, if it’s considered too big to fail. Nothing startling there.

To read more, visit:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/02/27/bloomberg_articlesLZX66Y07SXKX01-LZX66.DTL

Doctors call for HPV shots for boys

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 12:26 PM PST

By Cheryl Wetzstein-The Washington Times

Despite lackluster acceptance among girls for a vaccine to prevent cancer-causing sexually transmitted viruses, the American Academy of Pediatrics is fully recommending that boys get the shots as well.

Boys 11 and 12 should be immunized routinely, with three doses of a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), the AAP said Monday in its online issue of Pediatrics. This formally updates the academy's previous policy of "permissive recommendation" for vaccination of males.

The AAP has recommended since 2007 that girls ages 11 and 12 receive the HPV vaccine.

The new policy should end any resistance among health insurers to covering HPV vaccines for boys. Each HPV shot cost about $130 in July; three shots are needed for the vaccine to be fully effective.

Merck & Co.'s Gardasil is the only approved HPV vaccine for males; both Gardasil and Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, are approved for females.

The HPV vaccine exploded into a presidential political issue last year when Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the race.

In 2007, when the first HPV vaccine was approved for girls ages 11 and 12, Mr. Perry issued an executive order mandating it for Texas girls. An outcry ensued over the usurping of parental rights and the idea that the vaccine gave tacit permission for children and teens to engage in premarital sex.

To read more, visit:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/27/doctors-call-for-hpv-shots-for-boys/
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