...Yet another Obamunist tax cheat

Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The Senate Finance Committee on Monday revealed that President Barack Obama's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, had failed to pay $10,000 in taxes over the span of three years beginning in 2005. The panel report comes after several other nominees faced controversy over tax issues.

Kirk, a former Dallas mayor, failed to report as income $37,750 in honoraria collected for 16 speaking engagements at Austin College, his alma mater, for 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. He also deducted NBA Mavericks tickets worth $17,382 as entertainment expenses in 2006, 2006 and 2007, but has substantiated only $9,900 of the expenses.

Two nominees of President Barack Obama, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer, pulled themselves out of consideration in February due to tax issues. Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner had to overcome a controversy about back taxes before he was confirmed, while Labor Secretary Hilda Solis faced concerns about her husband's payment of tax liens.

“Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.”

— Plato

Obama Selects Janet Reno's Anti-Gun Point Man As Next Attorney General

The re-establishment of the Clinton regime continues.

Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general - Eric Holder

This amounts to nothing more than "politics as usual" as Eric Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, 1997 to 2001. Where's the change Obama has been preaching?

As deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, Holder has consistently championed stronger gun-control measures. In fact, he supported the District of Columbia's handgun ban, lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows and went so far as to say that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right, but instead protects the right to have a firearm when serving with a militia.

To push his gun control agenda, Obama is surrounding himself with extremists, who have been striving to erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights.

After leaving the Clinton administration, Holder became a partner at the legal and lobbying firm of Covington & Burling. Holder’s most publicized case at the firm was his defense of Chiquita Brands International, Inc., whose executives were facing potential charges because of their financing of right-wing death squads in Colombia. Holder protected those executives at the expense of the corporation, his client, causing the corporation to take the fall and pay a $25 million fine, while the executives who actually committed the crime in the name of the corporation remained uncharged.

As a senior legal advisor to the Democratic Party, Holder supported the police state measures enacted under the Bush administration, playing a leading role in the talks that led to the re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2005. The Patriot Act grants unchecked powers to government, and strips U.S. citizens of their right to due process, unreasonable search and seizure and other basic freedoms. Barack Obama voted yes to reauthorize the Patriot Act (S. 2271), in March, 2006.

And Remember those last-minute Clinton pardons? Eric Holder was there, a key figure in the clemency process, helping to bring them about. He brokered one of the most unjustifiable pardons that an American president has ever granted. Holder sparked a firestorm of controversy due to his involvement in the final corrupt act of the Clinton administration: the pardons issued on Bill Clinton's last day in office. Of these, fugitive Marc Rich, was granted a pardon in the final hours of the Clinton presidency.World-class mobster commodities trader, Marc Rich, who is No. 242 on Forbes' list of the 400 wealthiest Americans with a net worth of $1.5 billion, renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1983, and ran off to Zug, Switzerland, shortly before a grand jury indicted him on charges of racketeering, 51 counts of tax fraud, and illegal oil deals with Iran. Federal prosecutors said Rich rigged an oil pricing scheme during the 1973 energy crisis and in 1980, during the Iran Hostage crisis, he purchased six million barrels of oil from the Iranian government and sold it on the world market. Payments were made fraudulently through American banks and illegal use of American telecommunications facilities. Rich’s attorneys took the pardon straight to the White House attorneys, and gained pardon for their client, whose ex-wife, Denise, just happened to be a major donor to the Clinton library and Clinton's legal defense fund...

• $450,000 to the Clinton library
• $10,000 to the Clinton legal defense fund.
• More than $1 million to the Democratic Party
• $109,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton's first bid for the Senate

If that wasn't enough, Eric Holder has also advocated for internet censorship. As reported by NPR's Morning Edition on May 28, 1999, he said:

"The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate it. We tried with regard to pornography. It is gonna be a difficult thing, but it seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions, reasonable regulations in how people interact on the Internet, that is something that the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at."

With the help of Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel and other Clinton retreads, the Obama presidency is laying the foundations for the continuation of not only many of the criminal policies of the past eight years, but the new ones to come.

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

- -Thomas Jefferson

Obama's top nominees withdraw from candidacies due to problems with the IRS

Two top nominees, including former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle withdrew their candidacies from the Obama administration nominees.

Daschle's exit from consideration to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, resulted after a firestorm over his failure to pay $146,000 in taxes.

• More than $100,000 in back taxes and interest for a car and driver that was provided to him for four years by Leo Hindery, a wealthy Democratic donor, longtime friend and business associate of Daschle.
• Daschle was paid $1 million annually for his consulting services, and he had unreported consulting income of $88,333, in 2007.
• Daschle also had reductions to charitable contributions totaling about $15,000 over the three years.

Just hours earlier, Obama's nominee for the newly created position of Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer, also stepped aside because of a tax problem. Killefer failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help.

Rewarding failure is just part of the Washington political culture. Just ask Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner and the Senate Republicans. Recently, Geithner was confirmed as treasury secretary despite belatedly paying $34,000 in income taxes. A guy who can’t figure out his own taxes is supposed to 'fix the economy?' You don't seriously expect us to believe that?

Add the fact that Obama's first choice for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, took his name out of consideration when his confirmation appeared headed toward complications because of a grand jury investigation over how state contracts were issued to political donors, and you've got to at least wonder... what kind of people has Obama been associating with?

"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

-- James Madison

Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788

Obama appoints Emanuel as chief of staff

The enlistment of Rahm Emanuel amounts to nothing more than “politics as usual.” Where's the change Obama has been preaching?
Rahm Emanuel was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton's White House, and helped push through the North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA).
It was on Bill Clinton's watch that NAFTA was sold to the people of the United States, Mexico and Canada as a simple treaty eliminating tariffs on goods crossing the three countries' borders. But NAFTA is much more: It is the constitution of an emerging continental economy that recognizes no one but the business corporation. It gives corporations extraordinary protections from government policies that might limit future profits, and extraordinary rights to force the privatization of virtually all civilian public services. Disputes are settled by secret tribunals of experts, many of whom are employed privately as corporate lawyers and consultants. At the same time, NAFTA excludes protections for workers.

The business-backed politicians who pushed the agreement through the three legislatures promised that NAFTA would generate prosperity. But as soon as the ink was dry, US factories began to shift production to maquiladora assembly plant factories along the border, where the Mexican government assures an obsequious labor force and minimal environmental restrictions. The US trade surplus with Mexico quickly turned into a deficit, and since then at least 300,000 jobs have been lost.
In all three countries NAFTA has worsened the distribution of income and wealth. While ordinary people paid the costs, the benefits went to the continent's "powerful elite". Canadian and US corporate investors got guaranteed access to Mexico's cheap labor.

Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Freddie Mac, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002. The entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention."Freddie Mac agreed to pay a $50 million penalty in 2007 to settle the SEC complaint and four top executives of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation were charged with negligent conduct and, like the company, agreed to settle the case without admitting or denying the allegations. The actions by Freddie Mac are cited by some economists as the beginning of the country's economic recession. The federal government this year took over Freddie Mac and a sister federal mortgage agency, Fannie Mae, pledging at least $200 billion in public funds.

Freddie Mac records have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of its investigation of the suspect accounting procedures. During the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to the SEC, Freddie Mac substantially misrepresented its income to "present investors with the image of a company that would continue to generate predictable and growing earnings."
Rahm Emanuel was named to the Freddie Mac board by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto."
- - Thomas Jefferson