Report: Clerk Charged with Misconduct for Unlawfully Accessing Information on 'Joe the Plumber'

A records clerk in Ohio has reportedly come under fire for illegally accessing information on "Joe the Plumber" through a statewide database.

A records clerk in Ohio has been charged with gross misconduct after unlawfully using a state database to access information on the man famously known as "Joe the Plumber," the Toledo police department confirmed to FOXNews.com.

Julie McConnell, a long-time records clerk with the department's investigative services bureau, used the database -- called the Law Enforcement Automated Data System or LEADS -- to access information on Joe Wurzelbacher.

Wurzelbacher, a 34-year-old Ohio man looking to buy a plumbing business, rose to political fame after questioning Barack Obama on his "spreading the wealth" remarks during an Oct. 12 rally in Holland, Ohio. He has since become a symbol for John McCain's campaign, which says Obama proposes to raise taxes on small businesses.

McConnell allegedly used the LEADS database to confirm Wurzelbacher's address at the request of a local television reporter, Toledo police Chief Mike Navarre told FOXNews.com.

"You can't use that database unless it was for law enforcement purposes," Navarre said.

"If Wurzelbacher was a witness to a crime or a victim of a crime or a suspect to a crime and we needed to confirm his address, we could go in there to get it," he said.

An internal investigation into McConnell's activity was launched when the Toledo police received a phone call from the Ohio Highway Patrol, questioning why information on Wurzelbacher was accessed, Navarre said.

Similarly, a state agency director in Ohio has also come under under fire for reportedly authorizing a check on a state child-support computer system to determine if Wurzelbacher was up-to-date on any ordered child-support payments.

Navarre described McConnell as a "good employee," who has been with the department for 13 years.

"There was no ill intent here. There was no political purpose here. She was simply trying to do someone a favor," said Navarre, adding that the information McConnell provided was public record.

A disciplinary hearing is being scheduled for McConnell, who has not yet been found guilty.


"The level of discipline has not yet been determined yet," Navarre said.

Obama’s infomercial with paid Actors ?

Its quite clear our economy is in the tank and Americans are struggling, we didn’t need to see that in his infomercial by paid Actors. What we needed to hear was clear polices that will make the future for all Americans better. Obama didn’t breakdown his policy and truly explain his Tax plan. That’s what I was waiting for, his assertion that taking from the rich and giving it the middle class or poor makes no sense. Right now 45% of all Americans pay no taxes whatsoever, nothing. So the 95% figure Obama uses means nothing, and that part he should of explained. A year ago he stated folks making less then 300k would see a tax cut then it went to 250k then to 200k in his infomercial and Joe Biden the other day stated 150k, what is it, what’s the plan. It sounds like there just shooting from the hip, There is no substance to his plan.

Obama quote: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. "

So how will he cut those taxes for families making less then 200k ? how much of a tax credit is he going to give companies for every new employee ?, and how much will it cost ? tax breaks for companies to keep jobs from going over seas, and how much? freezing foreclosures for 90 days, how do you do this when these people are out of work or they qualified for a Stated Income loan and can’t qualify going Full Doc using paystubs.

Obama only gives talking points with no hard facts or figures on how he is going to accomplish this goal ?.

Obama quote: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. But his plan does not lower premiums by $2,500. his using smoke and mirriors on the voters.

Obama quote: "I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care."

Ok, his statement “I also believe” is not the same meaning as guaranteed health care coverage for all. He mentions children but not adults.

The 5 million spent on this infomercial would have been better spent on giving 10,000 familes currently having a tough time making there house payments a check for $500.00 dollars each. This would have been a better way of him to explain how spreading the wealth works.

Obama Speaks Of Rev. Wright In This 1995 Interview

In a 1995 interview, Barack Obama lavished praise on Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, calling him a “wonderful man” and “the best of what the black church has to offer.”




Now lets here from this great church

Barack Obama’s night of his first 30 minute infomercial

Barack Obama’s night of his first 30 minute infomercial even has some in his Liberal media talking about Obama’s broken promise to except Public financing In November 2007, in an interview with “common cause” when asked "If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?" Obama answered Yes.
"In February 2007 Obama wrote: I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

June 19, 2008 Sen. Barack Obama announced that he would not enter into the public financing system, despite a previous pledge to do so.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us; Barack Obama has made many pledges in his run for state office of Illinois and his U.S Senate seat election where promises were broken. The change candidate does change his mind a lot on breaking promises with his voters.

Despite all that, and despite his lead in national and most battleground polls, the campaign decided to plunk down between $3 and $5 million to buy half-hour blocks of time at 8 p.m. tonight on NBC, CBS, FOX, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One for delivery of his final argument to the voters.
I must give kudos to ABC for not going along with this nonsense, if Fox had not did this they would of been called Racist or in the bag for McCain so I believe this the only reason they are running this ad of Obama.

Today, Obama is dominating the television ad wars. As of Oct. 22, Obama placed 150% more ads than McCain in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the Nielsen Co.

Could it seem to some voters like overkill?

I believe so, if Obama sits down and can tell us his real intentions on his tax cut without the same talking points he tends to say all the time and get into substance by breaking down the numbers like Ross Perot did in 2002 he my do well, but he won’t. The biggest risk in airing the infomercials, according to the strategists, is that Obama could irritate people by interrupting their regular television viewing habits.

Perot’s programs drew an average audience of 11.6 million viewers, or 4.6 percent of viewers nationwide, according to Nielsen. His one simulcast on ABC and CBS on Nov. 2, 1992 attracted 26 million viewers, Nielsen found.

Quote from Campbell Brown CNN One year ago, he made a promise. He pledged to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits. Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word. He broke his promise and he explained it by arguing that the system is broken and that Republicans know how to work the system to their advantage. He argued he would need all that cash to fight the ruthless attacks of 527s, those independent groups like the Swift Boat Veterans. It's funny though, those attacks never really materialized. For this last week, Sen. Obama will be rolling in dough. His commercials, his get-out-the-vote effort will, as the pundits have said, dwarf the McCain campaign's final push. But in fairness, you have to admit, he is getting there in part on a broken promise.

Quote from Obama supporter today
DEMS' CAMPAIGN-FINANCE HYPOCRISY
By BOB KERREY
ON the question of public funding of presidential campaigns, we Democrats who strongly support Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy and who previously supported limits on campaign spending and who haven't objected to Obama's opting out of the presidential funding system face an awkward fact: Either we are hypocrites, or we were wrong to support such limitations in the first place.I'm sad to report that hypocrite is a more accurate label. Bob Kerry

Ross Perot's used his own money his self-financed candidacy tapped national attitudes as a successful Texas businessman with no political experience (he had never held elected office, worked in a bureaucracy, or studied public policy), Perot was the ultimate outsider. Perot's response was aggressive television advertising campaigns, including conventional, 30-second spots and half-hour paid "infomercials." The strategy portrayed Perot as a down-to-earth outsider who was not afraid to discuss issues and present real solutions. Perot frequently focused the infomercials on deficit reduction, his pet project. The presentations often included Perot's colorful graphs and appealing humor.

Am not sure Obama can be so graphic on his policies because his shooting from the hip with the message of change with no real policy. His character is suspect and so is his policy. And his supporter’s don’t care because all they here is the word change, by using the argument he is not committing to anything and if his not committing to anything then he can’t be accused of not keeping any promises.

Judge rules Ohio homeless voters may list park benches as addresses

We can thank these two for allowing more voter fraud Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Democrat Secretary of State of Ohio Jennifer Brunner

Obama, in 2001 Interview, Lamented Failure of Civil Rights Movement to Redistribute Wealth

In a radio interview in 2001, Barack Obama said the civil rights movement failed when it became so dependent on the Supreme Court that it never got around to working toward redistributing income.

FoxNews,Drudge Report
A 7-year-old radio interview in which Barack Obama discussed the failure of the Supreme Court to rule on redistributing wealth in its civil rights rulings has given fresh ammunition to critics who say the Democratic presidential candidate has a socialist agenda.

The interview -- conducted by Chicago Public Radio in 2001, while Obama was an Illinois state senator and a law professor at the University of Chicago -- delves into whether the civil rights movement should have gone further than it did, so that when "dispossessed peoples" appealed to the high court on the right to sit at the lunch counter, they should have also appealed for the right to have someone else pay for the meal.

In the interview, Obama said the civil rights movement was victorious in some regards, but failed to create a "redistributive change" in its appeals to the Supreme Court, led at the time by Chief Justice Earl Warren. He suggested that such change should occur at the state legislature level, since the courts did not interpret the U.S. Constitution to permit such change.

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical," Obama said in the interview, a recording of which surfaced on the Internet over the weekend.

"It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.

"And the Warren court interpreted it generally in the same way -- that the Constitution is a document of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted.

"And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that," Obama said.

The 2001 interview evokes recent questioning by Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man who asked Obama about his proposal to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000. Obama told Wurzelbacher he wants to hike taxes on the wealthy so that the government can spread the wealth.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Monday the comments on the tape have "nothing to do with Obama's economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut."

"Here are the facts. In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of 'redistributing' wealth. Obama's point -- and what he called a tragedy -- was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country," Burton said..

"As Obama has said before and written about, he believes that change comes from the bottom up -- not from the corridors of Washington. ... And so Obama's point was simply that if we want to improve economic conditions for people in this country, we should do so by bringing people together at the community level and getting everyone involved in our democratic process," Burton continued.

John McCain's campaign said the tape proves that Obama is too liberal for the White House.

Now we know that the slogans 'change you can believe in' and 'change we need' are code words for Barack Obama's ultimate goal: 'redistributive change,'" said McCain-Palin senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin.

"Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn't been more 'radical' and described as a 'tragedy' the court's refusal to take up 'the issues of redistribution of wealth.' No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench," Holtz-Eakin continued.

National Review reporter Byron York, a FOX News contributor, said the U.S. government already has a progressive tax system that gives money earned by one group to another group, but it's a matter of degree. He added that Obama's outlook on that system hasn't changed.

"It seems clear from listening to this that the Obama of 2001 and probably the Obama of today feels that the government doesn't do that enough, and I think that's probably the big point in this tape," York said.

"You've got to take him at his word," York added. "It seems to me that the tape shows that this is simply a goal he has had for a long time."

In a speech in Cleveland on Monday, McCain said the Obama interview is just another indication that the Democrat wants to increase sharply the amount of government spending.

"Today, he claims he will only tax the rich. But we've seen in the past that he's willing to support taxes that hit people squarely in the middle class, and with a trillion dollars in new spending, the most likely outcome is that everyone who pays taxes will be paying for his spending," McCain said.

Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama

2003 farewell party
LA Times Reported
CHICAGO -- It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking. His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.

"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."

Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.

Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.

"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."

Looking for clues

But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.

And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.

Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.

Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.

Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.

Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."

The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.

Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.

Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.

Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.

"In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."

In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.

In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.

He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.

While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.

In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.

At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.

In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.

Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.

"He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."

Ties with Israel

Even as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.

In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."

In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.

As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.

One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.

"In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.

The LA Times Is Holding on to the video Tape refusing to release the Video of this dinner stating it would unfairly portray Obama in supporting the Palestinian cause. We need to forward this email to as many people as possible and use the email listed above too request this video to be released to the main stream media before the election.

Contact The Los Angeles About Its Holding the Obama-Khalidi Videotape
Contact information for The Los Angeles Times is below.


Tell the LA Times What You Think by e-mailing the paper's "readers' representative," Jamie Gold, at readers.rep@latimes.com or click here to fill out a feedback form. Or call to leave a message with Gold at (877) 554-4000.

Obama's economic plan of raising taxes

Senator Barack Obama has unveiled his economic plan of raising taxes on the successful. His plan would boost the top marginal rate to well over 55 percent—before the inclusion of state and local taxes—resulting in many individuals seeing their marginal tax rate double. The consequences of this policy would be a return to the bad old days of tax avoidance, with taxpayers disguising personal income as business income or capital gains and the migration of capital from the United States to abroad.

Between now and January 1, 2011 (five short years away),
· Tax rates will rise substantially in each tax bracket, some by 450 basis points.
· Low-income taxpayers will see the 10-percent tax bracket disappear, and they will have to pay taxes at the 15-percent rate.
· Married taxpayers will see the marriage penalty return;
· Taxpayers with children will lose 50 percent of their child tax credits;
· Taxes on dividends will increase beginning on January 1, 2009.
· Taxes on capital gains will increase, also beginning on January 1, 2009; and
· Federal death taxes will come back to life in 2011, after fading down to nothing in 2010.

What makes this tax nightmare scenario particularly scary are the economic benefits that will never be realized if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts disappear. Businesses are watching now to see if Congress will make permanent the first to expire of the major economic growth components of the 2001 and 2003 tax acts—lower taxes on dividends and capital gains. Failing to make permanent the low tax rates on investment would signal to businesses of all sizes that the other major elements of the Bush tax plan will also be allowed to expire. They would adjust their investment and hiring accordingly.

Among the more prominent elements of his tax proposal, Senator Obama would end the Bush tax cuts and allow the top two tax rates to return to 36 and 39.6 percent. He also would allow personal exemptions and deductions to be phased out for those with income over $250,000. The real kicker, though, is that Senator Obama would end the Social Security payroll tax cap for those over $250,000 in earnings. (The cap is currently set at $102,000.) These individuals will then face a tax rate of 15.65 percent from payroll taxes and the top income tax rate of 39.6 percent for a combined top rate of over 56 percent on each additional dollar earned.
High-income individuals will be forced to pay even more if they live in cities or states with high taxes such as New York City, California, or Maryland. These unlucky people would pay over two-thirds of each new dollar in earnings to the federal government.
Only six of the top 30 industrial nations have a tax rate for all levels of government combined that adds up to more than 55 percent. Obama's tax plan would give us a higher top rate than such high-tax nations as Sweden and Denmark. And these sorts of tax rates slow the economy.

Obama made it crystal clear to Joe the Plumber that he plans a massive redistribution of wealth — taking your wealth!

Oh, just so you know, Obama's plan defines 'rich' anyone making over $90,000 a year, because that's when his FICA tax cap comes off and you start paying an addition 7% of tax on each and every dollary you earn above the cap!

And if you are making just $50,000 a year or more — expect to pay another 4.5% on each and every dollar you earn starting in 2010. That's when the Bush tax cuts expire.

'President Obama' has emphatically states he will expire those cuts for "rich" people like you.

There aren't many who long for a return to the 1970s. Those of us old enough to recall that decade tend to think of gas lines, a hostage crisis and Watergate. President Jimmy Carter never used the word "malaise," but he acted as if America was doomed to decline, and it was his job to make sure it went smoothly.

Obama's crazy plan must be stopped. It will not only cost you money, it will throw the U.S. economy into a depression.

Tax Foundation looking at 2004 groups when it comes to paying taxes
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf

Obama Tax plan
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/23319.html.
While the majority of the redistribution is targeted to taxpayers in the middle three quintiles, a surprising large amount—$40 billion—would flow to taxpayers in the 80th to 95th percentile (those earning roughly $93,000 to $192,000 per year). This is largely due to the extension of the AMT patch


A brief overview of the alternative minimum tax (AMT).

The alternative minimum tax (or AMT) is an extra tax some people have to pay on top of the regular income tax. The original idea behind this tax was to prevent people with very high incomes from using special tax benefits to pay little or no tax. The AMT has increased its reach, however, and now applies to some people who don't have very high income or who don't claim lots of special tax benefits. Proposals to repeal or reform the AMT have languished in Congress for years, but effective action does not appear to be on the horizon. Until Congress acts, almost anyone is a potential target for this tax.

The name comes from the way the tax works. The AMT provides an alternative set of rules for calculating your income tax. In theory these rules determine minimum amount of tax that someone with your income should be required to pay. If you're already paying at least that much because of the "regular" income tax, you don't have to pay AMT. But if your regular tax falls below this minimum, you have to make up the difference by paying alternative minimum tax.

Q: How do I know if I have to worry about the AMT?

A: Unfortunately, there's no good answer to this common question — which is one of the big problems with the AMT. You can have AMT liability because of one big item on your tax return, or because of a combination of many small items. Some things that can contribute to AMT liability are mundane items that appear on many tax returns, such as a deduction for state income tax or interest on a second mortgage, or even your personal and dependency exemptions.

Preparing the park for Barack Obama Big Party Election

Chicago Times
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sought to allay concerns from Chicago taxpayers and city officials today with promises it would foot the bill for an expansive outdoor rally at the southern end of Grant Park on election night.

Meanwhile, city workers began preparing the park for the event, CLTV reported. A stage was being built near Columbus and Roosevelt Drives and portable heaters were unloaded from trucks, the station said.

But on the question of monetary responsibility, "They have assured us that they're willing to pay," said Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications spokeswoman Jennifer Martinez, adding that the city had yet to hit the total button. "We're still outlining what some of these things will entail."


The U.S. Secret Service--and ultimately federal taxpayers--pays for nearly all the security around Obama. The city and state are likely to bill the campaign for things like street closures, crowd control outside a secure area in Grant Park, help with motorcades and overtime for public safety workers.

"In addition to the normal permit fees paid for park rentals, the campaign is already making arrangements to assure that city resources are not used to clean up the park following the event," Obama campaign spokesman Justin DeJong said. "The campaign is also paying for substantial private security and EMS [emergency medical] services to limit the need for city services surrounding the event."

In recent days, city emergency management chief Ray Orozco has been working with the Obama campaign to pin down details of the election night rally.

On Wednesday, photographers and officials from local and national news organizations toured the likely spot to plan their own election-night set-ups. Though deep in negotiations with the city, the campaign has yet to file for official permits to hold the event, according to the Chicago Park District.

Finding a way to keep from billing taxpayers for a big private event was key to city officials, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said earlier Wednesday.

"That's what we're talking about. That will be the issue," Daley said when asked about the rally's cost. He spoke at a news conference focusing on property tax relief.

Security around Grant Park will be very high and almost certainly will require fencing to be put up around a secure perimeter. As is the case for concerts and festivals held in the park, some streets in the area likely will be closed.

Details on ticketing have not yet been announced. Attendees likely would face metal detectors and have their possessions searched, just as at all Obama events. The process is similar to going through airport security and can create lines blocks long, as was the case at an Obama event under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis last weekend that attracted an estimated 100,000 people.

In the hours before and during the event, locals should not be surprised to see snipers and security agents with binoculars positioned on the roofs of buildings and other high structures. That often takes place when Obama holds outdoor events.

No part of a presidential campaign is cheap, and as a reminder, the campaign told news outfits Tuesday what they could expect to pay to cover the event:

Access to a 20-amp power outlet would be $165. A spot on the main riser would be $935, as would a table and chair in a heated tent with power, sandwiches, high-speed Internet and a good view of cable television. A covered television platform suitable for network anchors would cost $29,700. Parking a satellite truck would be $990. Many others will cover the event for free with passes that let them stand in the cold.

Even Obama staffers view the event with angst, though for a different reason. They're concerned volunteers in northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin could be drawn away from get-out-the-vote efforts to join a potentially historic rally in Chicago. That is troubling to a campaign that views both areas as key terrain in battleground states.

Obama Victory Bash for Election Underway

Confident Obama campaign splurges $2M to prep Chicago's lakefront Grant Park to host hundreds of thousands attending victory bash — but what if he loses?
Barack Obama has reserved part of Chicago’s Grant Park for Election Night festivities on November 4. According to the Chicago Tribune: “The large public space between the Loop and lakeshore also hosted a papal visit in 1979 and a Chicago Bulls NBA championship celebration in 1991. It more routinely hosts open-air concerts, sporting events and the Taste of Chicago.”
Is Obama jumping the gun by reserving the large public space on Election Night? Does it look like the Democratic presidential candidate is planning a victory party? Or does the campaign simply need to focus on logistical arrangements this week? Share your thoughts. Click on “Leave a Comment” below.

Young man calling from an Obama phone bank

I have learned how Barack Obama plans to cut taxes for 95% of the public, even though only 60% of people pay income taxes. The explanation came from a young man calling from an Obama phone bank, one of millions of such calls being made these days.
Before we discussed the tax proposals, the college-age caller informed me that:

-Sarah Palin belongs to a church whose pastor believes in witchcraft, and that she is anti-Semitic.

-Obama will give me government-run health care and will pay for it, and all his other programs, by taxing the rich and corporations. When I pointed out that the wealthy already pay the majority of income taxes, and that corporations don't really pay taxes, that they -- for the most part -- simply pass those taxes on to consumers, he sounded confused, as though they were concepts he had never heard before.

-Under Obama's health plan I will be able to go to any doctor, including the most expensive specialists I can find, and the government will pay for it and all my other medical expenses, no matter how high the cost. Again, paid for by increased taxes only on the rich and corporations.

-After my questions about Obama's connection to ACORN, and the numerous investigations into widespread ACORN voter fraud, that John McCain was trying to prevent students from voting. His evidence? He had heard that nugget on one Air America talk show. He sincerely believed it to be the moral equivalent to the numerous investigations into ACORN voter fraud.

-McCain's economic policies would be devastating. When asked if he knew anything about McCain's proposals, he admitted he did not.

-Obama will hire people to drive down "high" unemployment, although he was unaware of where unemployment current stands (6.1% in September) or that it is low by historical standards.

-Obama will increase employment by giving tax breaks for corporations to bring jobs back to America. When I said my understanding was that the tax break would be $3,000 per job and asked how many people he thought would be willing to work for $3,000 a year, he said he would. He apparently had no concept of how little money that would be.

-The stock market will tank further if McCain is elected. When I pointed out that the stock market is a forward-looking mechanism, and that at least some of the market's recent fall has been the result of pricing in an expected Obama victory, he simply continued to maintain the market would fall if McCain is elected.

Finally, I asked the troubling question about how Obama will ensure a tax break for 95% of people--despite the fact that about 40% don't pay income taxes. He struggled with that one for a while. Again, it seemed to be a foreign concept to him, like no one had ever raised the subject before.

He stumbled through a series of answers. Obama would "give" the unemployed jobs so that they could pay taxes and get a tax break. When I reminded him that would only account for 6%, he--in a tribute to the American education system--said that Obama was really talking about the 55% difference between 95 and 40. I reminded him that Obama had specified 95%, not 55%. He replied that "Obama didn't really mean that." I asked if he, the caller, was really supporting a candidate who lied about something so important?

He told me to wait while he talked to his supervisor. I could overhear bits of a conversation in which he referred to me, rather politely, as "a difficult one." (At least he didn't call me THAT one.)

When he returned to the phone, he informed me that Obama would reach the 95% figure by initiating taxes on the 40% who don't pay income taxes now, so that he could later give them their promised tax break.

Out of the mouths of babes.

I don't know which is scarier: that the young man knew so little about the policies of the candidate for whom he had volunteered to work, that the young man's supervisor apparently knew little more, or that the talking heads say that young people like him could determine this election.

The Obama caller was polite and sincere ... and utterly clueless.

I thanked him for his sincerity and for a civil discourse on the subject. He thanked me for the same. Then we hung up.

And then he made his next call.

Obama Wants 12 Million Illegals to Get Citizenship

By: David A. Patten

A Barack Obama administration would be a “nation killer” if Democrats attain a “supermajority” in the Senate, a leading conservative figure on immigration warned Tuesday.

Obama also has said he wants to make the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. citizens as soon as he can — an amnesty program that would make them legally entitled to full government benefits, including Social Security and health care.

William Gheen, president of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), says Obama’s plan would make it politically impossible to secure America’s borders. He describes Obama and a new Democratic Congress as a “worst-case scenario” for border and immigration security.

“I would paint that scenario as a nation killer,” Gheen, a former campaign consultant and an outspoken advocate for stronger border control policies, tells Newsmax. “I would expect amnesty to pass within a year. That means in the next presidential election, you will have a new voting bloc of 15 million illegal aliens who turn into voters.

“And that voting bloc,” he says, “especially in the Southwest United States, would be enough to take full control of most city, state, and county governments, thus destroying any future hopes for immigration enforcement or border security.”

Although GOP nominee John McCain has rarely confronted Obama during the campaign over immigration — presumably to avoid alienating Hispanic voters — Obama’s record reflects a clear focus on expanding entitlements to undocumented workers.

As a state senator in Illinois, for example, Obama co-sponsored that state’s version of the DREAM Act, which allowed youngsters in the country illegally to receive in-state tuition. He later supported similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

During a September campaign swing, Obama told the North Carolina Public Radio station WUNC that the children of illegal immigrants should have an opportunity to attend community colleges.

“For us to deny them access to community college, even though they’ve never lived in Mexico, as least as far as they can tell, is to deny that this is how we’ve always built this country up,” Obama said.

According to the NewsObserver.com, the McCain campaign reacted to Obama’s remark by issuing the statement: “John McCain does not support amnesty or benefits for undocumented immigrants. He has consistently opposed giving amnesty or public benefits to undocumented immigrants.”

Obama, who tends to dismiss discussion of his pro-immigration positions as politically motivated “distractions,” has demonstrated no such reticence to expand entitlements for illegals. Specifically:


Obama’s plan for universal health care would include coverage for illegal immigrants, according to political strategist and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris. Morris has warned that covering illegals “adds dramatically” to the cost of universal health care.


In March, Obama voted to table a Senate amendment that would support the withdrawal of federal assistance “to sanctuary cities that ignore the immigration laws of the United States and create safe havens for illegal aliens and potential terrorists.” McCain did not cast a vote.


Obama supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform legislation that was defeated in 2006. Since then, McCain has taken the position that securing the borders must precede immigration reform. Obama continues to support a process to “bring people out of the shadows” and eventually obtain legal status (at which point they would be eligible for the federally mandated benefits available to anyone, such as Social Security). Obama also calls for enhanced border security.


The Democratic candidate for president supports, in principle, providing state-funded welfare benefits to legal immigrants. While a state senator, Obama supported allocating state funds to provide Medicaid coverage to some legal immigrants, according to OnTheIssues.org.


Obama has supported increasing the number of work visas issued each year, such as the H1-B visa, especially for applicants with specialized skills. According to OnTheIssues.org, Obama co-sponsored, along with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a bill that would provide federal funding to help states provide health care and education to non-U.S. citizens.


Obama strongly supports encouraging American children to become bilingual and, at one point in the campaign, appeared to suggest it should be mandatory. In June, he voted against a Senate provision that would declare English the national language of the United States. McCain voted for it.

Edward I. Nelson, the chairman of the nonprofit U.S. Border Control organization, warns that “Welfare and in-state tuition are powerful inducements to illegal immigration, as are free medical benefits.”

Nelson says his organization has awarded both Obama and McCain an “F” on their immigration and border control policies.

Gheen says Obama and McCain both would ultimately favor amnesty for illegals, albeit differently.

“Obama would give in-state tuition and driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, then make them legal,” Gheen says. “McCain would make them legal, and then give them in-state tuition and driver’s licenses.”

Health care: What they're proposing vs. what will pass

McCain and Obama agree we need health care reform, but neither of their plans is likely to pass Congress without drastic changes.


In his Democratic convention acceptance speech sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton declared that as one of the first initiatives of his administration, he would "take on the health care profiteers and make health care affordable for every family."

Two years later, his "Health Security Act" was dead, never having gotten even as far as a vote in Congress.

Nearly two decades of soaring premiums and reduced coverage later, health care is again at the top of the reform agenda in Washington. Barack Obama and John McCain have each issued their own plans for sweeping reform: Obama's would rely on a new National Health Insurance Exchange to allow more businesses and individuals to access cheaper pool coverage, while McCain's would replace the tax deductibility of employer-sponsored coverage with a flat-rate $2,500 per person, per year tax break to be used toward health insurance.

If history proves anything, though, it's that sweeping reforms seldom look the same after going through the crucible of Washington politics - especially when the subject is a highly contentious issue like health care reform. The McCain and Obama plans are just "watercolors," says Len Nichols, health policy director for the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. What the candidates are proposing, and what will actually pass into law, are likely to look very different.

"Unlike in 1993, Congress is going to own this debate," he predicts. "The president is going to make a speech, and then Congressional committees will do what they're supposed to do - which will make it much more likely to actually work."

The good news, says Nichols, is that there's already been significant bipartisan activity in Congress on health care, making it more likely that reform can move forward without getting bogged down in the kind of partisan battles that doomed the Clinton plan.

For small business owners, action can't come too soon. One upcoming study by Mercer Consulting, according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, projects that small business health costs will rise 10% next year; a Kaiser Family Foundation survey last year found that the percentage of small firms covering health care had fallen from 68% to 59% since 2000.

NFIB has made health insurance reform a priority this year, co-sponsoring a set of ads starring "Harry and Louise," the fictional couple that the insurance industry used to help defeat Clinton's health plan. (Yes, they even brought back the same actors from the early '90s.)

NFIB legislative policy manager Michelle Dimarob notes that her group hasn't taken a position on either of the candidates' plans: "There's interesting components in both, but there's probably more unanswered questions."

Instead, her organization has focused more on backing broad principles for reform. Its wish list: Increased access to insurance pools, market reforms such as preventing insurance companies from hiking premiums for firms with one employee in poor health, and targeted tax incentives for the small-group and individual market.

After years of talk about reform, Washington observers say the time finally seems right for action. "There is pretty broad interest in doing something to help small employers and workers in small firms because they do have such a high rate of uninsured," says Urban Institute economist Linda Blumberg.

The plans
Whatever legislation eventually emerges will probably have its roots in the various Congressional bills already under consideration. One NFIB's Dimarob singles out as especially promising is the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Act, which would allow statewide or nationwide small-business insurance pools, ban rating based on health status, and provide a $1,000 per employee tax credit for small businesses that pay at least 60% of their employees' health premiums.

Introduced in the Senate last year by two Democrats and two Republicans, the SHOP Act has bipartisan support and the backing of several influential lobbying groups, such as the Service Employees International Union and the National Association of Realtors.

Another bill kicking around, the Small Business "Cooperative for Healthcare Options to Improve Coverage for Employees" (Small Business CHOICE) Act, would provide a refundable tax credit of 65% of the cost of premiums, plus allow for increased pooling.

A more ambitious bill that's attracted bipartisan attention is the Healthy Americans Act, introduced in the Senate by Ron Wyden, D-Ore, and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and in the House by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. and Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo. The HAA features elements similar to both candidates' plans: Like Obama's, it would create new insurance pools to reduce premiums and administrative costs; like McCain's, it would get rid of the health care tax deduction for employees.

The HAA's sweeping plan would eliminate employer-based insurance entirely. In its place, all Americans would be required to purchase a Healthy Americans Private Insurance (HAPI) plan through new state-run "Health Help Agencies," which would mandate minimum coverage and outlaw discrimination on the basis of preexisting conditions. Subsidies would be available for anyone earning less than 400% of the federal poverty level, and everyone below a designated income level would receive a standard deduction on their taxes.

Individuals would be required to pay for their insurance premiums themselves, but businesses don't get off scot-free: They'll have to help subsidize the system through a new tax, collected by the IRS and then routed back to the state Health Help Agencies. The size of the tax varies based on the size of the business, with small companies paying a fraction of the percentage charged to larger companies. Employers will also be required to "cash out" their current health care payments for the first two years of the new system, converting the money they would have otherwise spent on health insurance premiums directly to wages paid to employees, to compensate them for the loss of employer-provided health benefits. (The new tax would be waived for the first two years for employers making "cash out" payments.)

The HAA got a boost earlier this year when the Congressional Budget Office projected it could be budget-neutral - in other words, pay for itself - within six years. But some wonder if its massive restructuring of the how businesses pay for health care would be too complex. In particular, Blumberg worries, trying to determine how much employers should cough up for their "cash out" payments could be extremely messy: "I applaud the notion, because it's very consistent with economic theory, but I think implementation might cause difficulties."

"It's more structurally sound than the Clinton plan, but it is a very big hill to climb," admits Nichols, who likes the plan.

Expensive changes
The wild card here, as with all other plans for a new administration, is the economy, and what it will mean for sweeping programs that are likely to require new government expenditures. "Comprehensive health care reform takes a comprehensive amount of dollars," notes NFIB's Dimarob. She believes this could make plans like the SHOP Act, which are more narrowly targeted to small businesses and the self-employed, more feasible in the short term.

Others, though, say it's unlikely Congress will pass incremental reforms until the larger issues are resolved.

"If there's going to be health reform, you would think it would be folded into something much bigger," says Kaiser Family Foundation vice-president Gary Claxton. "It seems unlikely that small business stuff will go first, until they at least take a shot at more comprehensive reform. If comprehensive reform doesn't happen, then various pieces could break off" - though without broader reform, he notes, it's going to be hard to find money to pay for any kind of subsidies for small-business coverage.

Nichols is buoyed by the fact that the day after the initial Wall Street bailout plan failed, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., held a press conference to stress the need for immediate health reform, regardless of the economic situation. With businesses staggering under rising costs and more Americans going without insurance, the health care situation has grown dire enough that politicians can't postpone taking action much longer.

That said, Nichols predicts it will likely be "a two-year conversation" before anything is resolved.

Claxton, meanwhile, believes that reading tea leaves at this point is a fool's errand: "I don't think the bills that will be primarily discussed have probably been introduced yet."

By Neil deMause
October 22, 2008:

Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:01 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?


All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.


The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “gift” cards, industry analysts and a confidential informant tell Newsmax.


An ongoing Newsmax investigation into the Obama campaign’s finance reports has exposed multiple instances of campaign finance violations and has been cited in a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission filed by the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6.


Though many of the known violations include donations in excess of the $2,300 per election limit on individual contributions and contributions from foreign nationals, the extent of the amount of fraud is hidden because of a loophole in federal election law.


Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.


The Obama campaign has turned a blind eye to the possibility of donor fraud. Reportedly, during the heated primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign “turned off” many of the security features on its online donor page, allowing any person with a valid credit card number to donate using any name or address.


Typically, card merchants require a cardholder’s name to match critical personal details, such as an address or, at the least, a ZIP code.


Though in recent months the Obama campaign has tightened up security and restored some of the security features used by merchants to weed out fraud, it still has left open easy ways for potential credit card fraud, including techniques similar to those employed by terrorists and drug traffickers to launder illicit funds.


For example, on Oct. 14, an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in Obama’s latest small-donor fundraising drive, making a $5 donation through the campaign’s Web site.


Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” credit card to make the donation.


The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution, and gave him the name of another donor who had agreed to “match” his contribution.


Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same credit card.



The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle.


Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This credit card donation raised no alarm bells in the Obama campaign.


A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”


But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same credit card.


Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign. They were:



Bart Simpson, of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.


Family Guy, of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, GA.


King Kong, of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.


Newsmax learned of these contributions, which were all made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.


Calling himself “Bart Simpson,” the tipster said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest,” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”

[Editor's Note: See "Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules."]



“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made in the names of Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Raela Odinga, and Family Guy.


“What this means is that the Obama campaign does no verification of the name of the contributor. With a normal credit card, this wouldn’t wor[k], but with these disposable debit cards, no problem!


“This needs to be exposed,” he said.


The tipster attached the confirmation pages from the Obama Web site showing the names of the donors, and in some cases, the names of other Obama donors who had agreed to “match” their contributions.


None of the matching donors’ names appears in the Obama campaign’s public disclosures to the FEC.


Other donors with clearly fictitious names revealed previously by Newsmax, The Los Angeles Times, and blogger Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) include “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”


Five major companies process the bulk of all credit card transactions made in the United States, industry insiders tell Newsmax. The Obama campaign paid one of them, Chase Paymentech, just over $2 million to process its online transactions.


“We never discuss our relationships with any of our merchants, or customers we work with,” James Wester, a spokesman for Chase Paymentech, told Newsmax.


Newsmax asked whether Chase Paymentech had any security feature that would allow it to identify individuals making contributions using gift cards, but Wester declined to comment.


But other industry analysts, who asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the issue, told Newsmax that processors could track gift cards and debit cards “only by the numbers on the cards.”


“There are no names associated with these cards, so as a processor, you have no way of knowing who made the transaction,” one industry analyst said.


Anyone can go into a supermarket or a Rite-Aid and buy a batch of these cards with cash, so there is no trace of the transaction, he added.


“It’s like walk-around money. They could be handing these things out as perks” to newly registered voters or others, “and there’s no way of tracing who is using them.”


Ken Boehm, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in campaign finance law, said that such contributions were clearly illegal.


“Making a contribution in the name of another person is the only part of federal election law that actually carries a criminal penalty,” he told Newsmax. Boehm is the CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.


The Obama campaign has paid Synetech Group Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., close to $2 million to compile all of the campaign contribution data from online contributors, bundlers, telemarketers, campaign events, and direct-mail campaigns, and process it for submission to the FEC.


The sheer scope of the Obama fundraising juggernaut was “never contemplated by the FEC,” a company official told Newsmax, asking not to be quoted by name.


“It’s a lot of data. You’re talking 7 million contributions,” he said.


The campaign itself is responsible for screening out fraudulent donors, not Synetech, he said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this is as well-managed as any [campaign]. It’s just huge. When it’s this big, any little thing becomes something more than it is.”


One of the biggest problems the campaign faces is fraud, he said. “It’s a colossal problem. They’re paying the campaign with other people’s money.”


Individuals such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” who made hundreds of contributions to the campaign in excess of the legal limits were not working for the campaign, but for themselves, he insisted.


“It’s all fraud. They do it for kicks. Or they’re testing the cards. The campaign doesn’t want this. Why on earth do they want to have all these messy little transactions? It’s a colossal pain.”


However, the campaign itself has solicited these “messy little transactions” in numerous e-mails to supporters.


For instance, just days before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to supporters, asking them to “make a donation of $5 or more before midnight this Thursday, July 31st, and you could go backstage with Barack.”


Since them, the campaign has run several small donation drives, claiming to “match” donations of $5, $10, or $25 with an equal amount for a previous donor.


Newsmax put a series of questions to the Obama campaign more than a week ago in preparation for this article, such as whether its Internet contribution system automatically matches donors' names and addresses to their credit card numbers, as is common industry practice with online stores.


Newsmax also asked if the campaign uses a similar security screen to match a donor’s name and address to the card number when the donor uses a debit card or a gift card.


Despite multiple requests from Newsmax, the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.

reported by Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Howard Stern's Interviewing Harlem Voters ...

Wolf Blitzer asked Obama if he supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Obama answered: “Yes.”

Text

Nineteen terrorists infiltrate the U.S.

Thirteen get driver’s licenses.

The 9/11 plot depended on easy to get licenses.

Obama’s plan gives a license to any illegal who wants one.

A license they can use to get government benefits, a mortgage, board a plane, even illegally vote.

[Wolf Blitzer of CNN asks:] “Senator Obama, yes or no.”

[Obama responds:] “Yes.”

Barack Obama. Too radical. Too risky.

The National Republican Trust PAC is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The driver’s license issue emerged in September 2007, when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered New York officials to grant driver’s licenses to illegals. During the Oct. 30, 2007, Democratic primary debate at Drexel University, Sen. Hillary Clinton fumbled a question from the late Tim Russert over whether she supported Spitzer’s plan. As for Obama, he has supported driver’s licenses for illegals since his days in the Illinois Senate, and continues to maintain that training illegals to drive, and insuring them, enhances public safety.


Fact: Obama also addressed the licensing of illegals during the October 2007 debate. Asked if he favored Spitzer’s plan, Obama replied: “I think that it is the right idea. And I disagree with [Sen.] Chris [Dodd], because there is a public safety concern. We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn’t negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 30, 2007]

Fact: A full 77 percent of American adults oppose granting driver’s licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.

[Source: Rasmussen Reports, national telephone survey, November 2007]

Fact: There are 203 million licensed drivers in America, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Approximately 1 in 5 fatal car accidents involves a driver who, for whatever reason, does not have a valid driver’s license.

[Source: “Outrageous! Cracking Down on Illegal Drivers”
by Michael Crowley, Readers Digest, September 2008]

Fact: Sen. John McCain’s online policy statements do not specifically address driver’s licenses for illegals. McCain is on record, however, opposing any benefits for those who “have come here illegally and broke our laws.”

In one speech he pledged, “It would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”

[Source: Feb. 7, 2008 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC]

Fact: In February, Obama told ABC’s David Muir, “If [McCain] wants to try to parse out this one issue of driver’s licenses, an issue of public safety, my response is that we have to solve the overall problem and this driver’s license issue is a distraction.”

[Source: “Obama Defends Illegals’ Driver’s Licenses,” ABC.com]

Fact: When he served as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama voted to train, insure, and license illegals to operate motor vehicles in order to “protect public safety.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Nov. 15, 2007, Las Vegas]

Obama wins debate with Charisma

It’s a fact Obama has great charisma when comes to speaking with the Voters and media, but that only goes so far. Supporters of Obama don’t care about having no record when it comes to legislation, all they want is change.
Obama has no record:
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005 his first sponsor of legislation was 1/31/07 with no legislation passed see below and go to the website maybe I missed one or two.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery

He has 129 of Sponsored or Co-Sponsored Legislation with nothing passed, anybody can write legislation or jump on the bandwagon and co-sponsor legislation, but a leader needs to bring people together to pass legislation. Obama Has not done that.

As for John McCain he is no Ronald Reagan. He has no charisma and doesn’t look very well on T.V, which is most of his problem. He is the wrong candidate to be running up against Obama. Although he does have a track record of crossing the isle and working with both sides to pass legislation. We all know John McCain’s record good or bad.

This election will go to Obama

Obama convincing a voter speading the wealth is good for America

Obama in Ohio was confronted by a man, who shouted: “Do you believe in the American Dream?”
When Mr. Obama answered yes, the man said he had a follow-up question.
“I’m being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American Dream,” the man said, perhaps referring to Mr. Obama’s plan to increase taxes for those making $250,000 a year or more . While Mr. Obama ran through a series of points about how his plan would mean tax cuts for 95 percent of people, that didn’t seem to convince the man.
“I’ve got to go prepare for this debate,” Mr. Obama said as he walked away. “But that was pretty good practice.”
Obama states he will give tax cuts to 95% of Americans, but what he doesn’t tell you is that 40% of Americans right now don’t pay any income taxes what so ever, under his plan those folks not paying any taxes will receive $500.00 for a single person and $1,000.00 for every married couple which will be funded directly from payments from the U.S. Treasury - funded by higher-income taxpayers.

Joe lives in a $150,000 home I don't consider that rich

Jesse Jackson: Obama will rid United States of 'Zionist' control

By Haaretz service

Rev. Jesse Jackson said the United States will rid itself of years of "Zionist" control under an administration headed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The daily quoted the veteran civil rights leader on Tuesday as having said that although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they will lose a much of their clout when Obama enters the White House.

Speaking at the first World Policy Forum event in Evian, France, Jackson promised "fundamental changes" in U.S. foreign policy. He said the most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

Jackson said that Obama "wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy." He went on to criticize the Bush administration's handling of Middle East diplomacy, telling the Post, "Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss. Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all."

Obama Investigation on his Past

By Stanley Kurtz

10/14/08

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

African Village
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.

The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.

Rites of Passage
To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”

The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”

We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.

Jacob Carruthers
Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.

Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”

Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “...some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.

America as Rape
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist....” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.

Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.

More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”

According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey....” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”

When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.

Asa Hilliard
Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)

Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.

Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.

Ayers’s Pals
An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.

Obama’s Knowledge
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so