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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; business</title>
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		<title>FTC Should Pursue NY&#8217;s Empire State Development Agency</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/ftc-should-pursue-nys-empire-state9-development-agency/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ftc-should-pursue-nys-empire-state9-development-agency</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Nov 2014 05:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York State]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NY Economic Development Corporation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tax Index]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taxes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unfriendly]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245321</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[False advertisers try to sell New York as a good state for business -- after another dismal ranking. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/14810025-mmmain.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245322" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/14810025-mmmain-421x350.jpg" alt="14810025-mmmain" width="321" height="267" /></a>I almost fell off the treadmill this morning when I saw advertisements from the Empire State Development agency touting how great it is to do business in New York and <a href="http://www.bighappenshere.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">their website</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The powers that be in Albany, NY’s state capital, are trying to spin their way out of explaining the recent <span style="color: #305cb6;"><a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/2015-state-business-tax-climate-index">2015 State Business Tax Climate Index</a><b> </b></span><span style="color: #232323;">from the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., based research organization that ranked New York as the 49</span><span style="color: #232323;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #232323;"> worst state in the country in which to do business. </span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The tax index ranked only the Garden State lower than the Empire State as the worst state to do business in America based upon tax considerations.  Imagine the punishment that Jersey faces.  Jerseyans have the very punishment of living there, the awful Jets, <em>and</em> New Jersey is one of just two states to levy both an inheritance and an estate tax. Quite the combo.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, for entrepreneurs, New York ranked dead last in the report when it came to the individual income tax component of the state business tax climate index – which means that as an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RonnTorossian"><span style="color: #1255cc;">individual entrepreneur</span></a> there is nowhere worse to work for yourself.  Higher taxes hurt entrepreneurs, investments, hiring, morale and more.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">I have said it before, but perhaps as part of my self-help process its worth repeating:  As a resident of Manhattan, I pay over 50% taxes – 35% federal, 8.25 percent New York State taxes, and 4 percent local taxes. Add in Medicare, Social Security, payroll, workers compensation, commercial rent taxes, and who knows what other tax and it is more than 50 percent. In what world is that normal, fair or decent?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Wyoming ranks as the top state to do business in – and it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/wyoming"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illegal there for women</span></a> to stand within five feet of a bar while drinking – so who knows what makes sense?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Federal Trade Commission should enforce truth-in-advertising laws – and force Empire State Development to clarify that the “BIG” that is referred to in its ads about doing business in NY doesn’t refer to opportunity – it refers to taxes, major government obstacles, barriers and the fact that there are taxes on <a href="http://observer.com/2014/06/new-yorks-death-tax-and-selfies-with-tigers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">everything in New York</span></a>.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Governor Cuomo Celebrates Anti-Business Working Families Party</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/governor-cuomo-celebrates-anti-business-working-families-party/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=governor-cuomo-celebrates-anti-business-working-families-party</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:20:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuomo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[endorsement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[working families party]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226831</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New York government lurches toward radicalism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/andrew-cuomo-52f255cf3ee20010.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-226832 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/andrew-cuomo-52f255cf3ee20010-450x344.jpg" alt="andrew-cuomo-52f255cf3ee20010" width="327" height="250" /></a>Considering that <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/ronn-torossian/"><span style="color: #428bca;">New Yorkers</span></a> who make more than $250,000 pay more than 50% in taxes – and that New York ranks at the very bottom on the “Small Business Survival Index” it is outrageous that the Democratic Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, proudly accepted – and aggressively pursued &#8211; the endorsement of the extreme leftist Working Families Party (WFP). The WFP is pro-big taxes and anti-business.</p>
<p>The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C tax research group ranked New York State as the worst place in the nation for establishing a business based on taxes – should New York’s governor be aggressively courting the endorsement of an organization devoted to even higher taxes and anti-business policies?</p>
<p>Clearly Cuomo will now be devoted to an even more radical “progressive agenda,” and remain devoted to, as WFP puts it on their website, “[A world] where all of us, no matter where we come from, can find a good job, get healthcare when we need it, afford a home, send our kids to good schools, and have a secure retirement.&#8221;)  This “progressive agenda” is code-word for increased taxes – and will result in more jobs moving out of New York.</p>
<p>As one who was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RonnTorossian"><span style="color: #428bca;">born and raised in New York City</span></a> and has lifted himself up by the bootstraps to the point where I today employ over 100 people at my <a href="http://5wpr.net/"><span style="color: #428bca;">PR agency</span></a>, it is scary to think that extremists are influencing political offices throughout this State.</p>
<p>An expanded sick-leave law, like the one which recently passed in the NYC City Council penalizes entrepreneurs who start their own businesses. Small-business owners don&#8217;t get paid if they don&#8217;t go to work, so why should restaurants, which pay workers by the hour, need to pay double for shifts that need to be covered because someone doesn&#8217;t show up? Does the boss get paid if he doesn&#8217;t show up?</p>
<p>Even before this endorsement, one should note that the latest report from the Tax Foundation notes that 2014 marked the third consecutive year that New York had the highest tax burden in the nation. New York ranks as the highest taxed state in America. New Yorkers spend 12.6% of their per capita income on state and local taxes, the highest percentage of any state in the nation. And New York ranks 50th in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index compares the states in five areas of taxation that impact business: corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and taxes on property, including residential and commercial property.</p>
<p>New York has become the Must-Leave State &#8211; Census Bureau estimates show that 104,470 more people moved out of New York than moved into it during the 12 months ending July 1.  This comes off a decade where more than 1.6 million New Yorkers moved out of state between 2000 and 2010.  Will higher taxes and the very difficult life-style lure more people to New York?</p>
<p>A few months ago, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said &#8220;Right-to-life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay — if that&#8217;s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that&#8217;s not who New Yorkers are.&#8221;  Pretend he said &#8220;Pro-choice, anti-self defense, homosexuals – if that’s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that&#8217;s not who New Yorkers are” — and imagine the uproar that would occur.</p>
<p>Far too often, liberals only are tolerant when it comes to their own. Pursuing a radical path – and radical endorsements – leave many traditional New Yorkers alienated.</p>
<p>After Cuomo said what he said only a few months ago, he “corrects” that by pursuing such a radical endorsement? This lurch towards extremism to satisfy the far left is terrible. Governor Cuomo does not do anyone in New York State a favor by pandering to extremists.</p>
<p>New York is a very difficult place to live – with high taxes, high pressure and many other difficulties. As a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yelST1iWR4o"><span style="color: #428bca;">born and bred New Yorker</span></a>, an entrepreneur who works very hard it is shameful that capitalism is seemingly a bad word in New York.</p>
<p>The old Frank Sinatra song &#8220;New York, New York,&#8221; with its lyrics &#8220;If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere,&#8221; may not have envisioned the leftist Working Families Party (WFP) with such a strong grip on Governor Cuomo.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Staples and a Universal New York City Taxi Cab App</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/staples-and-a-universal-new-york-city-taxi-cab-app/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=staples-and-a-universal-new-york-city-taxi-cab-app</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2014 04:25:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[post office]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[taxi cab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224583</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why does the government resist innovation? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/staples-feat.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224584" alt="staples-feat" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/staples-feat-450x330.jpg" width="315" height="231" /></a>As a capitalist (and a sane person), it is readily apparent that on issues of performance, private-sector businesses will outperform the government.  Similarly, if I wanted work done in a timely and efficient manner, as an entrepreneur, I would choose private sector employees over government-backed union employees.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Recently, a national controversy has erupted with a dispute between big-box retailer Staples, which has started offering some simple postal supply services for sale. While that may sound like the normal course of business for a company already selling envelopes and packages, the problem is that the American Postal Workers Union objects.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now, nationwide we see Staples stores, which are staffed with non-union employees, being protested against. Rather than considering what is best for the American public, what the American Postal Workers Union is concerned about is that their employees are losing money. They of course do not address the fact that the United States Postal Service is losing tens of millions of dollars annually and service is regularly being cut. Americans throughout the country are complaining about postal service. While this very vocal, politically connected labor union is well-moneyed and well-connected, all that should matter is what is best for the consumer. And that answer is of course obvious: Privage enterprise is better than government-backed unions.  Consumers can choose not to buy postal services at Staples &#8211; or they can. But can anyone possibly think that Americans aren&#8217;t better suited here by shopping as they please?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Another scenario entirely exists in New York City, where there is already a major industry with what is essentially a public-private partnership. In New York City, taxi medallions are 7-figure investments. Owned largely by immigrants, the city’s taxi fleet consists of hard-working people who are on the streets daily, working hard to provide for their families.  It is a highly-regulated industry, whereby NYC&#8217;s Taxi &amp; Limousine commission regulates the rules and regulations of this industry which serves millions of people.</span></p>
<p>Against that backdrop, taxi apps are affecting both medallion owners and consumers in a major way.  While the convenience factor is way up, we are seeing regular &#8220;price-surging&#8221; &#8212; whenever it rains, whenever there is high-traffic, New Yorkers have no choice but to pay prices which are often double or triple what the market usually is priced at.  One wonders why there is no universal New York City taxi app which medallion owners can adapt, and the traditional, New York City taxi fleets will be able to survive, rather than die a slow death and lose the millions they have invested in taxis because the regulated industry they are in hasn’t yet adapted to technology. And they may see the millions they already invested lost.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Taxis take 175,000,000 trips a year, and each trip generates $0.50 in tax revenue for the city and state, for a total of at least $87,500,000 in MTA Taxes. Medallions also pay $1,000 per medallion per year for the joy of being able to use city roads. The most recent taxi auction saw the city raising $226,739,011.98 for coffers by auctioning off 200 mini-fleet wheelchair accessible medallions. These auctions happen regularly, and medallions cost in excess of $1 million dollars – income the city needs.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While medallions are outrageously expensive, one can expect to see the prices of medallions “surge” in the other direction of Uber if a universal app isn’t adopted – which can protect New Yorkers from price surging, and much more.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One may also wonder with taxi apps exploding, where is the union to protect their drivers? The National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA), who recently became the fifty-seventh affiliate of the AFL-CIO, is headed by a Marxist, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/the-afl-cios-newest-marxist-union-boss/">Bhairavi Desai.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> She regularly speaks and is a member of the Brecht Forum,</span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">an independent Marxist center in New York City &#8211; and could spend her time better pressuring NYC to do something which can ensure that taxis enter the 21</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">st</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> century – rather than furthering Marxism.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/ronn-torossian/">Ronn Torossian</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, and many others realize that New Yorkers no longer want to wait in the rain and whistle for a yellow cab, and it is inevitable that taxis adopt apps. If they do not, one can expect to see the city and state lose significant tax dollars – and dig deeper into New Yorkers&#8217; pockets.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Thank You to the Koch Brothers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/thank-you-to-the-koch-brothers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=thank-you-to-the-koch-brothers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Apr 2014 04:04:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Koch Brothers]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Left's war on pro-liberty job creators and philanthropists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/KochNKoch1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222672" alt="KochNKoch1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/KochNKoch1-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Americans of all political stripes must stand up and say thank you to David &amp; Charles Koch, billionaires who are the majority shareholders of Koch Industries, an oil, gas, and chemical company which is the second largest private company in America.  Simply by virtue of owning a huge company – which employs so many – these men should be thanked.  (Imagine their tax bill.)</span></p>
<p>This patriotic family has a family foundation that devotes hundreds of millions to charities, offers tens of thousands of people a chance to prosper, and is the epitome of entrepreneurship, which should be celebrated.  The charities that they donate to include a recent $100 million donation to New York-Presbyterian Hospital and charities devoted to the arts, including the American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Museum of Natural History.</p>
<p>Their parents have the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation, which, according to Wikipedia, is devoted to “support non-profits in Kansas&#8221; focusing on &#8220;arts, environmental stewardship, human services, enablement of at-risk youth, and education&#8221; through the funding of diversity programs at Kansas State University; the program Youth Entrepreneurs, a high-school level entrepreneurial and business program; the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which develops programs to enhance schools&#8217; history curricula; and the Bill of Rights Institute, an organization that holds seminars and workshops for teachers and administrators to provide &#8220;educational resources on America’s Founding documents and principles&#8221; to enhance the learning experience for students.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These are the things which people do not know about him.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Of course, the Koch brothers are leading advocates of a free-market economy and all-important issues of liberty.  </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286.html" target="_blank">As Charles Koch wrote yesterday in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, he is “Fighting to Restore a Free Society,” and “Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination.” He could not be more right. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) recently said that the billionaire Koch brothers are &#8220;un-American.&#8221; For daring to speak out against Obamacare, Reid said, “It’s too bad that they&#8217;re trying to buy America, and it&#8217;s time that the American people spoke out against this terrible dishonesty of these two brothers who are about as un-American as anyone I can imagine.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.newsmax.com/RonnTorossian/reid-koch-adelson-obama/2014/03/17/id/559908/" target="_blank">How terrible is it that a private citizen is attacked by the Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Imagine a private person is forced to write an op-ed in one of the nation’s most influential papers, where he writes, “[T]he fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation&#8217;s own government.” Of course, we saw it coming, when Obama in a well-publicized speech to business owners during his re-election campaign said, “You didn’t build that.”</span></p>
<p>Koch is so right when he writes that “[t]he central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism.” (This government also wants to run the lives of people in countless other foreign nations as well.)</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Read this paragraph in Koch’s op-ed: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need. According to government figures, our employees and the 143,000 additional American jobs they support generate nearly $11.7 billion in compensation and benefits. About one-third of our U.S.-based employees are union members.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Is not an employer of that size and magnitude worthy of private dialogue? Or a certain level of respect?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Koch family employs 60,000 Americans, donates hundreds of millions of dollars to philanthropic (non-political) causes, and they are attacked as un-American?  These private citizens who are among the most prominent executives and philanthropists are attacked by the most powerful man in the world and his allies for opposing the Democratic Party and exercising their democratic rights.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is what Obama’s America has come to. It’s awful, unfair and brutal. The right admires and respects hard-working executives, while the left hurts and attack. All the American people should say to this fine family is: &#8220;Thank you.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Stop Discriminating Against the Successful</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/stop-discriminating-against-the-successful/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stop-discriminating-against-the-successful</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2014 05:25:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Francois Hollande]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Lessons from the French President.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/017424737_30300.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219198" alt="0,,17424737_303,00" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/017424737_30300-445x350.jpg" width="312" height="245" /></a>How can anyone with a brain be surprised after reading today’s <em>New York Times</em>, which says that President François Hollande of France has begun a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/business/international/hollande-throws-open-frances-doors-to-business.html?hpw&amp;rref=business">“major charm offensive to convince the world that France is open for business in a bid to lure back investments.”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> What? You mean that Hollande’s 75 percent tax rate on the successful isn’t working? A campaign which drove out the successful by choking them has backfired and created huge economic problems? </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">You don’t say!</i></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As even the uber-liberal <em>Times</em> was forced to admit, “the United Nations conference on trade and development reported that foreign direct investment in France </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/webdiaeia2014d1_en.pdf">plunged</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 77 percent in 2012,&#8221; the sharpest decline of any Group of 20 nation. Hollande promised “change” and it spooked businesses away, rightfully. The article quoted a business owner, who paid double in France what he paid in Britain &#8212; and why would he want to do business in a place where he is penalized? Businesses and successful people work hard and deserve to be rewarded, not penalized. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The lessons of France are something which </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronn-torossian/">I, Ronn Torossian,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> hope that New York officials will learn from, as their current demonizing language is something more apt for a country with a socialist nature like France. And as France’s efforts are failing, if NY continues to seek to “soak” millionaires, they may just flee.  When that happens, it will not take long until NY will be forced to similarly chase money just as France’s President now does.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Along those lines, </span>why is it that discrimination against the wealthy is one of the few accepted forms of discrimination?<i style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While President Obama mentioned the word &#8220;inequality&#8221; 26 times in his State of the Union address, no one mentions the unequal treatment which is afforded to the successful amongst us. Why penalize the successful and have a system where the top one percent pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90 percent? That is the very definition of unequal, discriminatory treatment. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, 1.36 million taxpayers pay a larger share of the federal income tax than the bottom 90 percent &#8212; or 122 million taxpayers. </span>Discrimination which should come to an end.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With Obama’s policies, the discrimination gets worse. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency that provides independent analysis of economic and budgetary issues, said that the impact of President Obama&#8217;s plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995">can be up to 1 million lost jobs by 2016</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.  Raising wages 40 percent is too much, too quickly – in the midst of crippling tax raises and a still struggling economy.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Of course, let’s not forget that the Congressional Budget Office also said that </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cbo-obamacare-2-million/2014/02/04/id/550803">Obamacare would cost the economy 2.5 million workers</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by 2017.  The reason for that is clear &#8212; small companies will cut back on workers&#8217; hours to avoid requirements that full-time workers be offered health insurance. Raise taxes, raise costs &#8212; and bosses will eventually get fed up.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rather than working to ensure that entrepreneurs can earn more, which would create jobs, it destroys jobs by continually overtaxing the successful.  As an entrepreneur, as I have said before, there is a current system of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ronn-torossian/taxing-the-successful-to-death/">taxing the successful to death</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, and it doesn’t work or motivate those who need to create jobs.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">America must stop discriminating against the successful and create income tax equality.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Gov. Rick Perry: Why Texas Works</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/gov-rick-perry-why-texas-works/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gov-rick-perry-why-texas-works</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Texas Weekend]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The governor describes the keys to the Lone Star State's success at the Freedom Center's Texas Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of Gov. Rick Perry&#8217;s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend. The inaugural event took place May 3rd-5th at the Las Colinas Resort in Dallas, Texas.</em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/65718340" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/65718340">Governor Rick Perry</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user15333690">DHFC</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><strong>Rick Perry: </strong> And, David, it&#8217;s an honor to get to see you again and be in your presence.  And we&#8217;re certainly glad to have you here in Texas.  And even if your mailing address does continue to be in California.  (laughter)  I mean, really, California?  It &#8212; all the cool kids are moving to Texas, David.  (laughter)</span></p>
<p>But I&#8217;m just kidding because, I mean, God knows, if there is a place that needs David Horowitz, it is California.  (laughter) So, you know, the basic question I love to ask folks when I talk to people in California or Illinois or overseas, for that matter, is that, you know, what makes Texas so special?</p>
<p>And there&#8217;s a number of ways to go about that answer.  We are a unique culture.  We&#8217;re proud.  We are patriotic.  Fiercely dedicated to the values of individual freedom and responsibility.  We are a mix of backgrounds.</p>
<p>We are incredibly diverse state, culturally, ethically, philosophically.  No matter where you come from or what you believe, you can feel right at home in Texas.  Granted, if you&#8217;re a liberal, Austin&#8217;s probably about the only place that you&#8217;re going to feel really at home.  (laughter)</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s a great place and they love it there.  If you enjoy the finer things in life from world class orchestras to world class food, you can find it in Texas.  Same if you enjoy camping, fishing, hunting, hiking or even surfing, we have it all.</p>
<p>Of course, that&#8217;s what truly sets us apart over the last decade has been our economic climate.  And that&#8217;s something that we&#8217;ve worked very hard to develop, to cultivate.  It&#8217;s a climate built upon the fiscally conservative principles that have served us well through good economic times and throughout major national recessions.</p>
<p>CEOs are looking for something simple.  And that simplicity is predictability.  And in Texas, they know that they&#8217;re going to get just that.  They know they won&#8217;t be taxed into bankruptcy.  They know that they &#8212; that we have a low tax burden here.  That&#8217;s the foundation of this state&#8217;s tax philosophy.</p>
<p>We do that because we realize that more money in the hands of Texans is how you create more jobs in this state.  We realize that more jobs for hard working Texas tax payers means more options, more freedom, healthier Texas families.</p>
<p>People have gotten that message, too.  Our population continues to grow at somewhere north of 1,000 people every day move into this state.  Employers also know that they can put down roots in Texas.  That they won&#8217;t be tied up in miles and miles of government red tape.</p>
<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean that we don&#8217;t take care of our own.  That we don&#8217;t have appropriate regulatory climates.  As a matter fact, we&#8217;ve cleaned up our air in the last decade more than any other state in the nation during that same period of time.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s proof that you can have thoughtful regulation and at the same time lift your environmental quality as well.  What it means is that we&#8217;re reasonable.  We&#8217;re efficient when it comes to the regulatory process.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t a &#8212; just take my word for it.  Ask people like Andy Puzder.  Andy was the CEO of Carl&#8217;s Jr.&#8217;s, headquartered out in California.  He said that opening a new restaurant in California takes eight months.</p>
<p>Eight months before you can even break ground to start the construction.  In Texas, it takes about six weeks.  That&#8217;s a big reason you&#8217;re seeing more Carl&#8217;s Jr.&#8217;s as you drive around, Pat.  I don&#8217;t know if you use that establishment or not but you&#8217;re going to see a lot more of them in Texas.</p>
<p>Employers know that the Texas court system, for instance, won&#8217;t allow for over suing.  Someone in the audience said a thank you as I walked in for &#8212; in 2003 we passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation.  And there &#8212; and in 2011 we passed loser pay.</p>
<p>And again, sending the message (applause) that you can come to the State of Texas and you won&#8217;t be over sued.  The more time and money that&#8217;s spent in courtrooms is less time that you&#8217;re creating jobs in this state.</p>
<p>And then finally employers know that we have cultivated a work force that stands ready to fill any need as &#8212; that that employer may have.  Whether it&#8217;s on an assembly line, whether it&#8217;s on a sales line or whether it&#8217;s in a laboratory.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re about a decade into these efforts to improve our economic climate.  And I think the results speak for themselves.  <i>Foreign Direct Investment</i> magazine recently awarded Texas the 2012 Governor&#8217;s Award for being the most successful state in the nation in attracting foreign investment. And that publication is far alone in its praise for the Lone Star state.</p>
<p><i>Chief Executive</i> Magazine named Texas the country&#8217;s best state for doing business for the eighth consecutive year.  We&#8217;ve committed to making that nine, I would suggest to you, in the very short future.  (laughter)  Texas also received accolades from media outlets like <i>USA Today</i> and CNBC, <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, <i>Forbes,</i> <i>Site Selector</i> magazine.</p>
<p>More importantly than good press, though, is the fact that Texas continues to be the nation&#8217;s epicenter for job creation.  Texas employers have added more than a half million private sector jobs over the last two years alone.  A total of nearly 1.4 million jobs in the last ten years.</p>
<p>And as exciting as our present is, our future, I will suggest, is holding even more promise.  We remain very proud of our status as a national home to energy production.  Now, Mr. Hanley and I were talking about the energy industry in the State of Texas.</p>
<p>And we&#8217;re likely to find even more of that in the near future, I would suggest to you.  Though our healthy economy and strategic investment in research and young, innovative companies is what I want you to focus on just a bit.</p>
<p>There &#8212; I think during the presidential race someone made the comment that, &#8220;Gosh, come on, it&#8217;s easy being governor of the State of Texas.  I mean, that&#8217;s like going, playing poker and drawing four aces, right?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not quite that easy, sir,&#8221; as I told him.  (laughter)  I said, &#8220;It&#8217;s not quite that easy in the State of Texas.&#8221;  The point they were making is you&#8217;ve got all that oil and gas so obviously your economy&#8217;s going to be good.</p>
<p>In 1984, right before Texas teetering on the brink and going down on a long, long journey downward economically, oil and gas made up approximately 14% of our Gross State Product.</p>
<p>Today, after all of the massive amounts of gas and oil that have been discovered over the course of the last five and six years in particular with George Mitchell&#8217;s extraordinary innovation of hydraulic fracturing and the hor &#8212; or the directional drilling that&#8217;s going on.</p>
<p>All of the shale gas that has been found, the Eagle Ford and the Barnett shale, the Haynesville and even in the old Permian Basin, renov &#8212; rejuvenated.  Even with all of that, and oil at close to $100 a barrel, oil and gas industry makes up less than 10% of the Gross State Product in the State of Texas today.</p>
<p>This state has exploded in a very diverse way.  In biotechnology and medical technology and manufacturing.  And after today at the N.R.A. I&#8217;m pretty sure we&#8217;re going to get some more weapons manufacturers moving into the State of Texas.  (applause)</p>
<p>Last year Batelle reached a study &#8212; released a study that said that Texas was the top job creator in biotech.  That trend will only increase as we go into the future.</p>
<p>Just a couple of months ago GlaxoSmithKline announced that they were going to join up with Texas A&amp;M University in a private sector effort there and public &#8212; profit partnership, expending $91 million to create a new vaccine facility at that university that is going to be able to address issues not only of terroristic threats but also pandemic events that can occur in the world.</p>
<p>So in Texas you&#8217;re going to see the ability to address.  Historically it took nine months to go from one strain to another strain because it was an egg-based concept.  An egg-based process.  And they have developed a process of which it&#8217;s cell-based.  And now they can go from one strain to another strain in 45 days.</p>
<p>Soon in Texas there will be a process in place to create vaccines so that half a world away where Third World countries are being decimated by diseases or viruses and to save literally the potential of millions of lives, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re about in this state.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve created here because we&#8217;ve been innovative and we created an environment where entrepreneurs know that they can risk their capital and have a chance to have a return on their investment.  We&#8217;ve helped start-up companies keep their discoveries that are made here in Texas, instead of going to either coast.</p>
<p>That was historically when our universities came up with a great innovation it took off for the coast because that&#8217;s where the money was.  That&#8217;s where the technology and the researchers to take it to the next step, the gap funders, if you will.</p>
<p>That is truly changing and has changed where those companies are staying in Texas.  As a matter of fact, we are recruiting those mature companies from either coast to the State of Texas now.  (applause)</p>
<p>You think about, historically Texas has been a place where innovation did occur, whether it was the integrated circuit at T.I., whether it was during the space race of the &#8217;60s at Johnson Space Center, whether it was &#8212; again, I mentioned George Mitchell and that unlocking of the vast energy resources around the world.  That came from Texas technology.</p>
<p>And whether we&#8217;re on the cutting edge of energy or biotech or communications or commerce or privatized efforts to get our world back into space, Texas is going to be at the forefront of that movement.</p>
<p>The question before us now is how do we preserve and improve our economic health in the years to come?  Probably the biggest obstacle that we have, and this is part of human nature, is our own success.  With our economy surging, our revenues our collections are on a very steep upward trajectory primarily based on sales tax here in the State of Texas.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s led a lot of people, whether it was in the media, the newspaper, the television and our own legislature, to make the case that the time for fiscal conservatism is over.  They all talk about how much extra money we have floating around these days.</p>
<p>Of course, they&#8217;re ignoring that it&#8217;s our policies of restraining spending and limiting taxes that have led to that economic success.  They&#8217;re also ignoring the fact that there is no such thing as extra money.</p>
<p>And the tough decisions that we will make this session are no different than the tough decisions that we made in previous legislative sessions.  We still have to prioritize, we have to separate wants from needs.  We still have to think about what&#8217;s in the best interest, the long-term best interest of our communities and our state.</p>
<p>We still need to make good decisions now to ensure that we remain the economic power that we have grown to be.  And other states aren’t going to make it easy.  I saw Bobby Jindal today as we were passing.  And Bobby&#8217;s in the process of trying to do away with the personal income tax in Louisiana.</p>
<p>And I told him, I said, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to make me really uncomfortable if you do that.&#8221;  (laughter)  He said, &#8220;Good.&#8221;  And I said, &#8220;Awesome.&#8221;  I said, &#8220;That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re about to compete against each other.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the future of this country, I will suggest to you.  To Washington to recognize these laboratories of innovation that we have in this country, to allow these states to compete against each other, to get away from this one-size-fits-all whether it&#8217;s on social issues or whether it&#8217;s financial decisions and economic decisions.</p>
<p>Allow the states to come up with the answers that they need, that they want for their people.  That&#8217;s the way that we make America strong again.  (applause)  This administration, and frankly this Congress, is &#8212; will continue to try to force these foolish, costly mandates down our throats.</p>
<p>And when we don&#8217;t go along with them is really, they&#8217;ll chide us and they will say that we&#8217;re not being properly cooperative, was the words that the President used this last week.  That&#8217;s how President Obama described it.</p>
<p>He said that we were not properly cooperative.  And I know that he did not mean that as a compliment but I took it as one.  (laughter)  I actually took it as a compliment.  I am not properly cooperative with them on that issue of Obamacare.</p>
<p>We said no to setting up a state exchange.  (applause)  And it&#8217;s only a state exchange.  It&#8217;s only a state exchange in name only.  They call it a state exchange but here are all the rules and this is what you have to &#8212; it has to look like this.  It&#8217;s totally and absolutely mandated by Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>We also refused on multiple occasions the idea of expanding Medicaid in the State of Texas.  (applause)  Medicaid expansion, simply put, is just misguided.  It is ultimately a doomed attempt to mask the shortcomings of Obamacare.</p>
<p>Just this week we started seeing warning signs across this country of insurance companies, insurance premiums going to skyrocket.  We&#8217;re hearing rumblings about a lot of people losing their jobs, Pat, because of Obamacare.</p>
<p>We realized early on that pouring millions of dollars into this broken system was foolish.  I made the example, David, that putting more people into Medicaid was no different than putting more people on the Titanic knowing how that was going to end up.  I mean, it truly is a place that is going to bankrupt your state if you participate in that.</p>
<p>Think about what&#8217;ll happen when the case loads explode.  It will be a massive disaster across this Texas.  I mean, across this country.  Excuse me.  And we are our own country, so to speak.  (laughter) We have a marketing campaign, David, that&#8217;s called Texas:  A Whole Other Country.  (laughter)  And some people get disturbed about that.  But it&#8217;s a fun thing.  So.</p>
<p>But anyway, I want to share with you in wrapping up what fiscally conservative, thoughtful policies, what having freedom, for me, and I think freedom for our founding fathers was about freedom from over taxation, freedom from over regulation, freedom from over litigation.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the pillars of a powerful economy.  For a little over a decade now we have put those into place in this state.  And let me share with you one of the byproducts that&#8217;s powerful.  And I want to share it with you in a bit of a &#8212; not in an anecdotal way but in just a story that reflects the point.</p>
<p>In 2001, in the spring of 2001 I&#8217;d been governor for six months.  And we got the call that one of the great names in the corporate world was considering relocating their corporate headquarters either in Chicago or Dallas-Fort Worth.  Boeing.</p>
<p>Boeing was moving out of the Pacific Northwest.  We became ecstatic.  We gathered up all of our staff and the economic development division, the Department of Economic Development and said, &#8220;We must go win this.&#8221;</p>
<p>Was only a hundred and &#8212; I think 135 jobs total.  But it was just the cache, it was the name of getting Boeing to come to Texas.  What a powerful message that would&#8217;ve been.  Well, we made a lot of smoke and not much fire and we found that we weren&#8217;t very good at economic development.  And Chicago was the winner.</p>
<p>But we came back and sometimes in defeat is how you become stronger.  I&#8217;m hoping that&#8217;s the case, anyway, Pat.  (laughter)  Sometimes in defeat it is how you become stronger.  We came back to Austin, Texas, and we analyzed our economic development effort in this state and realized that we weren&#8217;t very good at it.  And that we were cumbersome, we were not flexible, we didn&#8217;t have the ability to attract, we didn&#8217;t have incentive programs.</p>
<p>And that next legislative session in 2003 we created the Texas Enterprise Fund which is an incentive program to be able to lure these companies into the State of Texas.</p>
<p>We collapsed the Department of Economic Development into a trusteed agency and moved it into the governor&#8217;s office so it could very quickly move and be flexible without a board to have to go through.  And to work directly with the governor&#8217;s office.</p>
<p>We put into place the most sweeping tort reform in the nation during that legislative session and we filled a $10 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes to send the message that we truly were going to be responsive to businessmen and -women and not just say, &#8220;Oh, we can&#8217;t make the hard decisions.  We&#8217;re going to have to raise your taxes.&#8221;</p>
<p>And over the course of the next years we stayed, adhered to those principles.  Oh, and as an aside, about a year after that Boeing thing went down, we heard through very well placed sources that one of the reasons, a strong reason that the decision makers at Boeing chose Chicago was because the spouses of the decision makers felt that the cultural arts were more expansive in Chicago to their liking than in Dallas-Fort Worth.</p>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m not going to make that argument today whether that&#8217;s true or not.  But that was the perception.  And so much in this business perception is reality.  Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to fast forward with you in just a moment and go to 2011, a short decade later.</p>
<p>In Texas, Fort Worth has built a new museum of modern art.  The Kimbell has expanded greatly.  The Basses have built one of the great symphony halls in the world.  Dallas has finished two performing arts facilities.</p>
<p>The AT&amp;T, the Meyerson.  Nasher moved their sculpture gardens to Dallas.  The American Film Institute now is headquartered in Dallas.  Austin, Texas, the little government and university town, has a new museum of modern art.</p>
<p>They have the ba &#8212; the Long Center of Performing Arts.  The Topfers built a new wing onto the Zachary Theater.  San Antonio is building a new performing arts facility.  And Houston tonight has more theater seats available than any other city in America outside of New York City.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s happened in a decade.  And it&#8217;s happened, I will suggest strongly, because we&#8217;ve allowed the private sector to keep more of what they earn.  And they made the right decisions about putting that money into those charitable causes, into the cultural arts.</p>
<p>Today I can assure you as we recruit from New York or from the Silicon Valley or from Illinois.  As a matter of fact, I was in Chicago just ten days ago inviting those people to come.  That our cultural arts today are expansive and they get to keep more of what they work for.</p>
<p>That is a powerful message.  It&#8217;s what America needs to be talking about.  We need to have this great discussion across this country about red state policies and blue state policies.  (applause)</p>
<p>And if we do that, if we will stand up and unabashedly and when &#8212; courageously stand up and say, &#8220;These are the policies that will allow you to live free.  These are the policies that will allow your family to be secure.  This is the way that your family will have a better future.&#8221;  We will have an America for the next generation that we are proud of and that truly is a beacon for all the world.</p>
<p>Thank you and God bless you.  (applause)</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>President Obama, Please Don’t Audit Me and 5WPR</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/president-obama-please-dont-audit-me-and-5wpr/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=president-obama-please-dont-audit-me-and-5wpr</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 04:25:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[audit]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A chilling revelation for business-owners from the IRS. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/irs-audit-red-flags-the-dirty-dozen.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189258" alt="irs-audit-red-flags-the-dirty-dozen" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/irs-audit-red-flags-the-dirty-dozen.jpg" width="258" height="178" /></a>My PR firm, 5WPR, represents multiple Russian businessmen, one of whom asked me last year how I can have a successful business yet write for outlets like FrontPage Magazine.  As a born and bred American, I laughed – and naturally told him, “You ain’t in Russia anymore.”  Last year, when a man I greatly respect, self-made billionaire Sheldon Adelson, said a second Obama term would bring government “vilification of people that were against him,” I listened. When he said that people who opposed Obama would be targeted, I remember it, as Adelson is a man who understands the streets and reality of realpolitik.</p>
<p>This week, truly terrifying news for anyone who believes in liberty was revealed when the IRS finally admitted that conservative organizations were unfairly targeted and audited by the IRS during the 2012 election. Undoubtedly, they only admitted it because it was about to be blown wide open publicly.</p>
<p>Even until today, their excuses are flimsy and are reminiscent of either a bad movie or the cooperation we often read of between Russian politicians and police outfits.  First, the IRS still ridiculously claims there wasn’t political bias in the audits, yet the organizations that were targeted were universally conservative and devoted to reducing government spending and taxes. No one can name a single non-conservative organization which was targeted – yet, in Obama’s America it’s a non-political operation.</p>
<p>The IRS claims junior-level employees took this action unilaterally, and those of us who are business-people would naturally find such a claim to be absurd.  If a private business owner were to have employees practice discrimination, wouldn’t they be responsible in a court of law? Wouldn’t they be penalized, face huge losses and the like? Yet, of course in government one wonders if so-called senior employees are ever cognizant of anything.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/jaysekulow/">Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ</a> said, it&#8217;s “McCarthyism” – and a deliberate targeting and harassment of conservative organizations.  This is the continued attack upon freedom and liberty by people who want to impose their will upon the rest of us.  It&#8217;s liberal practice at its finest – they are liberal on everything except for the right to disagree with them.</p>
<p>During the 2012 election, we could have observed the story of billionaire Frank VanderSloot, who donated over a million to the Mitt Romney campaign – and according to media reports raised up to $5 million for Romney’s campaign.  He was labeled by Obama election propaganda as a “Presidential enemy,” and shortly this American businessman – who has never before had legal issues &#8212; was audited by the Labor Department and IRS. <i>Putin may admire these tactics.</i></p>
<p>Moreover, on the heels of learning that the IRS is a political tool of the federal government, the new Obamacare, government-run health insurance system similarly calls upon the government and IRS to watch over American citizens.  Under the new regulations, the IRS is mandated to verify that all Americans have acceptable health coverage – and if they don’t then the IRS can impose new taxes.  They can also audit the taxpayer and add interest and penalties on top of the taxes. Surely this will hurt employers and the “wealthy” &#8212; but we should know and trust the government not to discriminate, right? After all, this is America, the land of the free?</p>
<p>And in America in the year 2013 there are many other ways one can see <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/May/IRS-Apologizes-for-Targeting-Tea-Party-Groups/">Obama’s</a> McCarthyism in place. Naturally, according to these liberals, monitoring Middle Easterners is offensive, so 3-year-olds are patted down by TSA agents in airports. Re-enter the U.S. from a foreign trip lately? Customs makes every American feel like they are a Columbian drug lord sneaking something into the country. They make every American feel like a criminal entering an enemy state. (Be reassured, last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to relax customs for travelers from Saudi Arabia).</p>
<p>It has never been harder to legally own a gun in the United States.  Yet Obama can order the killing of any American citizen anywhere in the world as he sees fit. All of this smacks of pure and simple political thuggery – something one may have seen in another time in Chicago. Yet, there is complete silence from all of the civil liberty organizations – as of course it is the federal government abusing conservatives. Would it not be right to have people stand up now for freedom?</p>
<p>I don’t hope for much from Obama’s “hope and change” – although I do hope as a columnist for FrontPage Mag that <a href="http://www.forimmediatereleasebook.com/ronntorossianauthorbio.html">5WPR and I, Ronn Torossian</a>, don’t get audited.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Most Powerful Names in Arab Media</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/the-most-powerful-names-in-arab-media/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-most-powerful-names-in-arab-media</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 04:07:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A sphere of influence that will only continue to grow. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/the-most-powerful-names-in-arab-media/prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-185777"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-185777" title="Prince-Alwaleed-Bin-Talal" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Prince-Alwaleed-Bin-Talal1-450x309.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="185" /></a>Quite interesting to read the annual ArabianBusiness.com list of the <a href="http://www.arabianbusiness.com/power500">500 most powerful Arabs in the</a> world – and it is truly amazing how many on the list have an impact on the media world and public perception. There are believed to be over 300 million Arabs worldwide – and their influence naturally spreads quite far.</p>
<p>While Arab wealth is well-renowned due to oil and many other resources, media isn’t an area which has traditionally received much attention as a sphere of Arab influence. Reviewing the Arabian business list, while social media has been credited with helping to spark the Arab spring, influential Arabs have a major impact on traditional media – and it’s going to grow and not go away.</p>
<p>Some choice powerful Arabs from the list:</p>
<p>• Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia ranked #1 on the list for the 9<sup>th</sup> year in the row – and the billionaire is the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corp. and a major owner of Twitter. <em>(And the biggest growth market in the world for Twitter is Saudi Arabia.) </em>Prince Alwaleedalso owns the Rotana Group, the largest entertainment company in the Arab world, 90% of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (the 1<sup>st</sup> private television station in Lebanon) and much more.</p>
<p>• The 5<sup>th</sup> most powerful Arab in the world is Twitter’s head of operations, a Jordanian named Mazen Rawashdeh.  Digital media is clearly rapidly growing and not vanishing – and with a Saudi owner and Jordanian running the company, clearly Arab influence matters at Twitter and in the digital arena.</p>
<p>• Emad Burnat (#15) is a Palestinian Arab whose film <em>Five Broken Cameras was </em>nominated this year for the Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards, and won multiple awards at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The movie has done wonders for the Palestinian issue and caused tremendous damage to Israel as a strong piece of propaganda.</p>
<p>• Rounding out the top 25 is Elie Khouri (#23), CEO of MENA Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing conglomerates.  Khouri is involved with launching IKEA in Egypt, and many other brands, and is involved with a Dubai art non-profit and UAE entrepreneur programs. Also in the top 25 is Joseph Ghossoub, chairman and chief executive officer of MENA Communications Group (MENACOM), parent company of legendary worldwide advertising agency Young &amp; Rubicam. Ghossoub is a director of Dubai Media Incorporated and has been described by Bloomberg News as “One of the Middle East communications industry’s most prominent spokespersons.”</p>
<p>• Owning a major <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/about5wpr/index.cfm">PR firm</a>, I assumed I was aware of many of the most influential people on social media – but admittedly had never before heard of the man named as the 35<sup>th</sup> most influential Arab in the world, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, who is a major commentator on the Arab world.  His twitter feed (SultanAlQassemi) was named by Time Magazine as one of the &#8220;140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2011,&#8221; and his reach is indeed quite far.</p>
<p>• Pierre Choueiri (#42) and Mohammed Al Mulla (#45) respectively own major media empires.  They reach many millions worldwide – and have the power to influence policy, opinion and actions worldwide.</p>
<p>The editor of Arabian Business said: “Once again we have produced what we believe to be the most comprehensive guide ever to Arab influence. This list is a celebration of the great work and contribution of Arabs all over the globe.” Others in the top 500 world of interest to those in the world of media and communications include Daoud Kuttab, Hala Gorani (CNN anchor), Mona Al Marri of the Dubai Government Media Office, who has been described as a <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/news/index.cfm">Public Relations</a> guru, and Egypt’s Bassem Youssef, who recently attracted worldwide media attention when he was arrested.</p>
<p>As the description noted, the “magazine defines power as <em>influence</em>.” Clearly, the Arab world understands the power and importance of communications and media – and it’s something to be aware of and knowledgeable about.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Amnesty: An Attack on the Poor</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-amnesty-an-attack-on-the-poor/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-amnesty-an-attack-on-the-poor</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:55:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the victims of immigration "reform" will be minorities and the economically vulnerable. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-amnesty-an-attack-on-the-poor/workers-in-clewiston-florida/" rel="attachment wp-att-183985"><img class=" wp-image-183985 alignleft" title="Workers in Clewiston, Florida" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Workers-in-Clewiston-Flor-008.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="164" /></a>Last Friday, the so-called &#8220;comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; effort <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/30/us-usa-immigration-deal-idUSBRE92T0B920130330?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=politicsNews">received a boost</a> when U.S. Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka reportedly came to an agreement regarding a guest-worker program. The deal indicates that one of the bill&#8217;s major stumbling blocks &#8212; the worry that a flood of unskilled, low-wage workers would crowd poorer Americans out of the job market &#8212; has apparently been overcome. Politically speaking, it has. For low-skill, low-wage Americans, however, it is an economic disaster-in-the-making. And though Democrats are once again casting themselves as the champions of beleaguered minority groups for pursuing this legislation, it is American blacks and Hispanics &#8212; the communities that suffer from some of the nation&#8217;s highest unemployment rates &#8212; who will pay the price for the Left&#8217;s amnesty folly.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/31/poverty-report/">report</a> published in 2011 by the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) made the case that illegal aliens were already competing with Americans for jobs, especially in the low-wage, low-skilled category. “Immigration, Poverty and Low-Wage Earners: The Harmful Effect of Unskilled Immigrants on American Workers,” revealed that of the 1.1 million <em>legal</em> immigrants admitted to this country on an annual basis, less that 6 percent &#8220;possessed skills deemed essential to the U.S. economy.”  &#8220;Some family-based immigrants may be highly educated or skilled, but the vast majority of admissions are made without regard for those criteria,” the report stated. “The immigrant population reflects the system’s lack of emphasis on skill. Nearly 31 percent of foreign-born residents over the age of 25 are without a high school diploma, compared to just 10 percent of native-born citizens.”</p>
<p>FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman illuminated the implications of adding a pathway to citizenship for illegals into the mix, explaining that “they will still be unskilled and poorly educated. The only difference is they will be legally able to stay here. They will file a tax return and will be able to claim all sorts of benefits,” he added. Mehlman was challenged by the Chamber of Commerce. &#8220;Immigrants do not ‘steal’ jobs from American workers,” a report titled “Immigration Myths and Facts” stated. “Immigrants come to the United States to fill jobs that are available, or to establish their own businesses.”</p>
<p>FAIR noted the absurdity of such a statement, contending that “there is no such thing as an ‘immigrant job.’ The reality is that immigrants and natives compete for the same jobs and native workers are increasingly at a disadvantage because employers have access to a steady supply of low-wage foreign workers.”</p>
<p>Last Tuesday, Black Entertainment Television (BET) founder Bob Johnson inadvertently <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/bet-founder-country-would-never-tolerate-white-unemployment-14-or-15-percent">confirmed</a> FAIR&#8217;s assessment of the jobs front with regard to black Americans. He noted that their unemployment rate is double the national average. Johnson claimed the challenge was to find out why that level was so high. A <a href="http://www.rljcompanies.com/phpages/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Results-of-a-National-Opinion-Poll-Conducted-by-Zogby-Analytics-Black-Opinions-in-the-Age-of-Obama_2013.pdf">poll</a> commissioned by Johnson revealed that 50 percent of blacks blame the “failure of the education system,&#8221; while 48 percent believe a “lack of corporate commitment to hiring minorities&#8221; is to blame. The truth is that low-skill workers, who are produced by poor education, are the most vulnerable during times of economic hardship, and unemployment rates reflect this. An influx of unskilled labor only stands to make the job market less hospitable for those blacks who are economically marginalized.</p>
<p>Not that this matters to Sen. Charles Schumer, who mediated the deal between Donohue and Trumka. “With the agreement between business and labor, every major policy issue has been resolved,” he said.</p>
<p>The deal creates a new “W’’ visa category aimed at low-skill workers. It would allow immigrants to earn the same wages paid to Americans, or an industry&#8217;s prevailing wages, whichever is higher. Since such wages can vary from city to city, the Labor Department would determine the prevailing wage. The proposal also includes the additional promises of border security, a crackdown on employers who hire illegals, and a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of illegal aliens currently in the country.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the oh-so-familiar promises that ought to infuriate Americans well aware that the exact same promises about border control and a crackdown on businesses were made when the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was <a href="http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-223824500/heading-for-home-or-amnesty-though-it-has-become">passed</a> into law. The one notable difference is that 2.7 million illegal immigrants were granted amnesty immediately under that version of &#8220;comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; &#8212; reform that was supposed to solve the problem once and for all.</p>
<p>Since the other two promises were broken with impunity, the resulting effects were easily predictable. If one believes the media-promoted estimates, more than 11 million illegals will be granted the right to remain in the United States this time around. Remarkably, that same media has failed to ask a single politician in either party a simple question, but one with profound implications for the nation: what if those estimates are wrong? Would the bipartisan &#8220;Gang of Eight&#8221; working to make this deal a reality have any reservations if the number of illegals about to be placed on the pathway to citizenship numbered 20 million&#8211;or higher? Would the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans, especially low-skill workers in direct competition with these immigrants for jobs, buy into the idea promoted by activist groups and business, along with their newfound allies in labor, that such mass legalization won&#8217;t affect their chances of finding a job?</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/the_economics_of_immigration_reform/">report</a> from the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, tried to put a happy face on the prospects for all American workers, contending that the influx of immigrants would increase overall wages between 0.1 and 0.6 percent. Yet it was forced to concede that low-skill American workers would be afflicted by a wage <em>decrease</em> of  up to 4.7 percent.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the <em>Huffington Post</em> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/immigration-reform-workers_n_2583576.html">contends</a> that low-skill American workers should support reform regardless. Their rationale is that while newly documented immigrants would compete for low-skill jobs now, once they become citizens, they would pursue better paying employment, lessening the competition, and giving immigrant workers more money to spend, supporting the economy. In other words, as the bill now stands, low-skill Americans have to wait &#8220;only&#8221; 13 years before their quest for a low-skill job becomes easier. Meanwhile, since our underlying immigration problems will remain unaddressed, a steady flow of legal and illegal low-skill immigrants should be expected in perpetuity.</p>
<p>Last week, Sen. Jeff Session <a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/march-28-2013/sen-sessions-guest-worker-program-will-hurt-unemployed-americans.html">cut</a> through some of the nonsense being peddled by the pro-amnesty campaign. &#8220;We have an immigration policy that says we have jobs but we don’t have enough workers,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That is what the businesses are telling us. We don’t have enough workers. They all ought to add &#8230; &#8216;And by the way, you need to give more welfare and more aid to people who don’t have jobs.&#8217; Now, what is the disconnect there?&#8221;</p>
<p>He continued. &#8220;We need to be protecting American citizens who are here, out of work, and hurting today&#8211;minorities, Blacks and Whites and all colors and races that are hurting today with high unemployment, but we seem to be more focused on how we can ram through this Senate a bill that would legalize millions and create an even more robust guest worker program. There are not enough jobs now. Give me a break.&#8221;</p>
<p>Despite this reality, some kind of bill seemingly remains on track. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sought to downplay the ostensible progress, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/291127-rubio-no-deal-yet-on-immigration-reform">noting</a> that a “final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people’s consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren’t part of this initial drafting process.&#8221; He further noted that a &#8220;rush to legislate&#8230;would be fatal to the effort of earning the public’s confidence.”</p>
<p>If the economy remains the public’s number one concern, such confidence may never materialize. In the middle of 2012, a <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/the_world_at_work">report</a> by the McKinsey Global Institute revealed that between 90 and 95 million low-skill workers could be <em>permanently</em> jobless by 2020. Meanwhile, the nation&#8217;s labor force participation rate continues to <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/03/and-yet-the-labor-force-participation-rate-is-still-falling.html">decline</a>, and the number of part-time employees <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/the-rise-of-part-time-work/">continues</a> to increase, to almost one-in-five workers. Furthermore, the <em>New York Times</em> reveals that &#8220;since 2008, 3.1 million new jobs have been created for college graduates as 4.3 million jobs have disappeared for high-school graduates and those without a high school diploma.&#8221; The paper further contends this divergence &#8220;will only continue, and even become more sharply defined.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; will import millions of low-skill workers into America, even as millions of illegal alien, low-skill workers already here will be put on a pathway to citizenship. Obama, Democrats, and more than a few Republicans terrified by the political ramifications of walking away from a deal, will get behind a plan that apparently ignores basic economics: if you have more of something &#8212; like an over-abundance of low-skill workers &#8212; each one of those workers will be &#8220;worth&#8221; less.</p>
<p>For years, Americans have complained about jobs being &#8220;outsourced.&#8221; For low-skill American workers, a terrifying new reality has emerged: if anything resembling the current agreement is passed, increasing numbers of jobs will be &#8220;<em>in</em>-sourced.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>New York: Big Taxes, Big Business Obstacles and Big Problems Happen Here</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ronn-torossian/new-york-big-taxes-big-business-obstacles-and-big-problems-happen-here/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-big-taxes-big-business-obstacles-and-big-problems-happen-here</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:10:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168877</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One left-wing state's pathetic attempt to attract more businesses. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ronn-torossian/new-york-big-taxes-big-business-obstacles-and-big-problems-happen-here/0021-51627/" rel="attachment wp-att-168882"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168882" title="0021-51627" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/0021-51627-450x327.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="196" /></a>When Frank Sinatra sang in New York, New York, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” I wonder if he was talking about the difficulty of doing business in New York today. New York recently launched a new government website, <a href="http://www.bighappenshere.com/">www.bighappenshere.com</a> intended to attract more businesses to come to New York State.  Launching to much fanfare via an expensive advertising campaign, “Big Happens Here” encourages people to visit the site and learn more about the virtues of opening a business here in New York.  Undoubtedly there’s nowhere more difficult than New York.</p>
<p>As a born and bred New Yorker, who lives in New York City and owns a <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/">Public Relations Agency</a> which employs more than 100 people, I agree that “Big Happens Here,” and wanted to save you a visit to the government website to help explain the “BIG” things which government boasts of that happens here.</p>
<p>The biggest “BIG” are the taxes – and government bureaucracy and obstacles to succeed with your business. As the ad tells you, “In New York State, a business can grow as big as anyone can possibly imagine” – and while that is true they will take nearly 50% of what you earn if you live in New York City. Between federal, state and local taxes expect to pay close to 50% after Medicare, unemployment, commercial taxes and all the rest. Grow your business in New York and you will pay increased commercial taxes as your need for office space grows.</p>
<p>In case you weren’t aware, New York ranks at the very bottom on the “<a href="http://www.sbecouncil.org/news/display.cfm?ID=4689">Small Business Survival Index</a>.” The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C tax research group ranked New York State as the worst place in the nation for establishing a business based on taxes. I started my business, alone exactly 10 years ago – and I have built it and can tell you it’s hard to survive, never mind thrive, as a small business in the “once-Empire State.”</p>
<p>Make $250K+ and expect to pay nearly 50% taxes if you live in the city, and when you buy a home with the profits from the growth of your business, expect to pay high property taxes.  (And if you own a business and make less than that, good luck having a family survive in New York.) New York imposes high taxes on personal income, individual capital gains, corporate income, and corporate capital gains. It’s a very clear signal of big things &#8212; and everything here is expensive.</p>
<p>If you decide to come here, make sure you get out before you die, or expect to lose the other half you made – the state’s death tax helps to send people packing for states with more friendly tax laws.</p>
<p>As the government site says: “No one ever came here to take a back seat, play second fiddle or make it small.”  And that’s all true &#8212; but expect to pay them through the nose for it.  Of course, if you rely on the government as an entrepreneur remember the scariest words Ronald Reagan said an entrepreneur can ever hear: “I&#8217;m from the government and I&#8217;m here to help.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare Leaves Restauranteurs with a Bad Taste</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/obamacare-leaves-restaurateurs-with-a-bad-taste/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-leaves-restaurateurs-with-a-bad-taste</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:30:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Flynn]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=167400</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The full consequences of the law on low-wage workers are bubbling to the surface.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/obamacare-leaves-restaurateurs-with-a-bad-taste/jimmy-johns-16x9/" rel="attachment wp-att-167404"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-167404" title="jimmy-johns-16x9" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/jimmy-johns-16x9.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="185" /></a>Stiffed waitresses know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They may soon learn there’s no such thing as free health care, either.</p>
<p>It’s newsworthy that ObamaCare proponents find a businessman’s proclamation that he intends to comply with the law newsworthy. Dean Hodges, the owner of 18 Jimmy John’s franchises West of the Mississippi, emailed the <em>Huffington Post</em> that he will seek to provide insurance to his uncovered full-time employees. “I’m trying to save for it and plan for it so I can comply with the government, provide health care, and still pay for it,” the sandwich shop proprietor wrote.</p>
<p>Doesn’t highlighting this man-bites-dog story paradoxically affirm that businessmen regard the signature legislation of the present administration as hostile to their livelihood? Restaurant proprietors, whose slim profit margins often revolve around such seemingly petty matters as napkins used and ketchup consumed, have reacted negatively to the increased overhead of insuring employees who work 30 or more hours a week that the Affordable Care Act mandates. Despite its name, the food service industry isn’t finding the law very affordable.</p>
<p>Darden Restaurants, the largest U.S.-based restaurateur, has begun experimenting with limits on employee hours in four markets. The owner-operators of Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and Red Lobster released a statement to the <em>Orlando Sentinel</em> affirming that limiting employee hours is “just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time.”</p>
<p>John Metz, owner of dozens of Denny’s, Dairy Queen, and Hurricane Grill &amp; Wings franchises, discussed imposing an ObamaCare surcharge on meals to defray costs—and to not hide them within the bill.  He points out that “to pay $5,000 per employee would cost us $175,000 per restaurant, and unfortunately, most of our restaurants don’t make $175,000 a year. I can’t afford it.” To avoid the added burden of ObamaCare insurance dictates on employers regarding full-time employees, Metz plans to cut back on hours. “It’s ridiculous that the maximum hours we can give people is 28 hours a week instead of 40,” Metz told the <em>Huffington Post</em>. “It’s going to force my employees to go out and get a second job.”</p>
<p>Zane Tankel, CEO of Apple-Metro, said on the Fox Business Network that under a best-case scenario he would have to engage in minimal layoffs at his 40 Applebees franchises in New York because of the health-care overhaul. “We’ve calculated it will be some millions of dollars across our system,” Tankel explained. “So what does that say? That says we won’t build more restaurants. We won’t hire more people—exactly the opposite of what the president says.”</p>
<p>Even Dean Hodges of Jimmy John’s concedes that conforming to the law’s provisions won’t be easy. Hodges notes that just 38 of his 550 employees currently receive health-insurance benefits. He estimates that ObamaCare will compel him to insure another 150. “If I add 150 people to the same plan, we’re talking over $500,000 in premiums. Ten of my 18 stores would become unprofitable&#8230;. if I’m unprofitable I can’t go on, I can’t exist, and I can’t employ anyone.”</p>
<p>And unemployment, which has been the nagging concern of millions of Americans during Obama’s first term, figures to get worse in the second administration because of the implementation of the health-care legislation. The unemployment rate exceeded eight percent for 43 months during Obama’s first administration. It exceeded eight percent for just 39 months during the previous 60 years. Put another way, the total amount of time the unemployment rate stayed above eight percent under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II doesn’t rise to the amount of time it spent above that mark during President Obama’s first term.</p>
<p>Like the infinite extension of unemployment insurance and the various stimulus boondoggles, ObamaCare offers perverse incentives regarding employment that planners overlooked. Because the Obama Administration didn’t plan for it, business owners, like Dean Hodges of Jimmy John’s, have to.</p>
<p>Will forcing health-care costs on sub shops inflate the cost of a sandwich? Depress the wage of a sandwich maker? Knock workers off the payroll and onto the dole? Put taxpayers on the hook for the health care of the unemployed? Turn the franchise owners’ profits into losses?</p>
<p>The questions weren’t asked when bureaucrats formulated the legislation. They will be answered once they implement it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Let&#8217;s Tax Hollywood</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/lets-tax-hollywood/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lets-tax-hollywood</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:36:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=165027</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for the celebrity class to start practicing what it preaches. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/lets-tax-hollywood/hollywood-mansions-for-sale4/" rel="attachment wp-att-165322"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-165322" title="hollywood-mansions-for-sale4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/hollywood-mansions-for-sale4-450x339.gif" alt="" width="315" height="237" /></a>President Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown are on the same page: the wealthy in America must foot the bill for the massive debts they’ve run up. Sure, the top 1% of income earners pay 37% of all federal income tax. But they’re not paying their fair share! Let Jerry Brown explain, hot on the heels of convincing Californians to raise their own sales and income taxes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Revenue means taxes, and certainly those who have been blessed the most, who have disproportionately <em>extracted</em>, by whatever skill, more and more from the national wealth, they’re going to have to share more of that.</p></blockquote>
<p>This, of course, is pure Marxism – the idea that there is a stagnant pool of national wealth, and that the rich plunge into it, shoving others out of their way, to hog all of the wealth for themselves. And Obama feels the same way:</p>
<blockquote><p>I’m open to new ideas. I’m committed to solving our fiscal challenges. But I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced. I am not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes. I’m not going to do that.</p></blockquote>
<p>Fine. Fair enough. If we’re going to tax those of high income, though, let’s start with those who provide that least valuable of services: entertainment. Let’s tax actors, singers, and athletes. After all, should their services disappear, our lives might be a little darker – but aren’t teachers more valuable than bit actors in <em>Red Dawn</em>? Furthermore, they were four square behind Obama and Jerry Brown.  Time to put their money where their mouths have been for so long.</p>
<p>With that in mind, let’s embrace the following solution to reach tax fairness: all income earned above $250,000 shall be taxed at 90% provided that it is earned within a five month period. If you work all year long for your $1,000,000, you should be taxed at normal tax rates. But if you put in a month of work to shoot a film, your taxes should rise to 90%; you’re gypping the rest of us. If we can all work 70 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, why aren’t these actors, athletes, and musicians doing their fair share?</p>
<p>Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit also has a fantastic idea: reviving the excise tax on movie profits. “The movie excise tax was imposed in response to the high deficits after World War Two. Deficits are high again, and there’s already historical precedent. Of course, to keep up with technology, the tax should now apply to DVDs, downloadable movies, pay-per-view and the like. But in these financially perilous times, why should movie stars and studio moguls, with their yachts, swimming pools and private jets, not at least shoulder the burden they carried back in Harry Truman’s day – when, to be honest, movies were better anyway.”</p>
<p>Or how about Human Events columnist John Hayward&#8217;s suggestion – let’s regulate Hollywood wages and fees. “The price controls and fee limits on medicine in the Democrats’ health-care proposals assume doctors will provide the same care and effort if their incomes are controlled, so why wouldn’t actors? They constantly claim to have a high degree of devotion to their art, so wouldn’t they give their best even if we limited them to a handsome upper-middle-class lifestyle?”</p>
<p>Not only that: let’s go ahead and outlaw the buying of individual iPod tracks. It’s unfair that some artists are paid handsomely for their songs, while others aren’t. Let’s bundle them together, so that the best artists subsidize the worst artists. Adele ought to cover Limp Bizkit. Bruce Springsteen ought to cover Kenny G. It’s simply unfair for some artists to prosper while others don’t.</p>
<p>Let’s also place taxes on film equipment. If the federal government can do it with medical equipment, we ought to do it with film equipment, too. The film industry needs that equipment enough to pay a little more for it.</p>
<p>Or how about federal regulation of movie prices? It’s unfair that some people can afford to go to the ArcLight – a really nice theater – while others are stuck at the Regency. Why not mandate that Hollywood subsidize the cost differential? Don’t those greedy one percenters want everybody to be able to enjoy <em>Skyfall</em> equally? Plus, we’ll bring down the deficit, since poorer people will be able to spend money on movies!</p>
<p>We can play the class warfare game too.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare Already Hurting Workers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-already-hurting-workers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-already-hurting-workers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=147855</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The unintended consequences of leftist policies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-already-hurting-workers/rtr2xk6k/" rel="attachment wp-att-148146"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148146" title="RTR2XK6K" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/RTR2XK6K.gif" alt="" width="315" height="228" /></a>The Left is expert at selling its statist, government-knows-best agenda as being in the service of the &#8220;greater good,&#8221; improving the overall quality of life for individual citizens. These policies, however, almost always cause unintended consequences that leave the targeted individuals &#8212; and scores of ancillary parties &#8212; at the mercy of myopic government meddling. The ever-expanding list of unintended consequences produced by the disastrous Obamacare law provide a case in point.</p>
<p>The latest example concerns Darden Restaurants, an Orlando-based company that operates such franchises as Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters, and LongHorn Steakhouses. The company is <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-10-07/business/os-darden-part-time-workers-20121007_1_darden-restaurants-health-insurance-olive-gardens">reacting</a> to the mandates imposed by the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka ObamaCare. According to one of the mandates in the the bill, employers do not have to provide health-insurance coverage to part-time workers, as long as they work less than 30 hours a week. Another says that a company with 50 or more employees must provide health insurance for their employees, or face fines of up to $3000 per worker for failing to do so.</p>
<p>Darden Restaurants is &#8220;experimenting&#8221; with a way to get around both of those mandates. In &#8220;a select number&#8221; of restaurants in four different and as yet undisclosed markets, Darden is putting almost their <em>entire</em> roster of employees at each location on part-time hours. In an emailed statement to the <em>Orlando Sentinel,</em> the company contends that staffing changes are &#8220;just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time.&#8221;  Darden is attempting to answer one of those questions by limiting every employee to 28 hours of work per week. Former Olive Garden busboy Keaton Hasty noted the level of seriousness behind the initiative. &#8220;It was 29 1/2 (hours), and they&#8217;d kick you out,&#8221; said Hasty, who now works at a pharmacy. &#8220;They&#8217;d always print off a little slip every day and say who was getting close.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, Darden has met the first of the two aforementioned mandates head-on. The other part of this equation concerns companies that employ 50 or more workers, who must also provide those employees with health insurance, or face a significant fine for failing to do so. <em>That </em>particular part of the equation is hardly unintended, as progressives have made no secret of the fact that &#8220;incentivizing&#8221; businesses to pay the fine and drive their workers to government exchanges, is part of the long-term goal of getting every American on a government-run health plan.</p>
<p>Yet again, dynamic behavior will inevitably produce the obvious unintended consequences of this arrangement: companies with a roster of employees close to the threshold number of 50 will have almost no reason whatsoever to hire any additional workers, if those additional workers put them under the statist boot they can otherwise avoid. And a company with slightly more than 50 employees may be perversely inspired to find a way to <em>reduce</em> their number of workers, also in order to get below the threshold. If the volume of work necessitates additional help? Companies will likely <a href="http://www.obamacarewatch.org/primer/employer-mandate">outsource</a> the work even if it is more inefficient than hiring new employees directly.</p>
<p>In effect, Darden has solved the problems imposed by both mandates. Since part-time workers are not required to be covered, Darden can have as many employees as it wants to hire, and as long as they work less than 30 hours per week, they will not be liable for healthcare coverage, <em>or</em> the fine imposed for failing to provide it. Unsurprisingly, Darden Restaurants are not alone. Analysts contend other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are looking to do the same thing. &#8220;I think a lot of those employers, especially restaurants, are just going to ensure nobody gets scheduled more than 30 hours a week,&#8221; said Matthew Snook, partner with human-resources consulting company Mercer.</p>
<p>Yet that is only part of the equation. Since Darden is large enough and profitable enough, progressive critics <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/11/995131/restaurant-company-uses-obamacare-as-an-excuse-to-shift-to-part-time-workers/">contend</a> that it is &#8220;prioritizing profits over employees’ satisfaction and well-being&#8221; and that additional laws could be added to ObamaCare to prevent such &#8220;benefit-dodging.&#8221; This is due to the reality that ObamaCare &#8220;only modestly increases health care spending for large firms,&#8221; an increase progressives apparently feel it is the &#8220;duty&#8221; of large companies to absorb. They further contend that imposing ObamaCare on small businesses <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/09/979101/study-obamacare-reduces-costs-for-small-businesses/">reduces</a> their healthcare costs based on three factors: the less than 50 employee exemption, a tax credit to help with the costs of healthcare premiums for companies that employ 25 workers or less (with an average salary of $50,000 or less), and a more competitive market produced by the state-run healthcare exchanges mandated by the plan.</p>
<p>The first factor has already been debunked. As for the second, tax credits only matter if a small company wants to provide their employees with insurance&#8211;assuming they have the wherewithal to do it in the first place. Many small companies operate on low profit margins, and <em>any</em> extra burden imposed on them by government is a disincentive to hire. The idea that a tax credit&#8211;as opposed to maintaining a profit margin&#8211;will incentivize not only additional employment, but the acquisition of an employee healthcare plan as well, is the stuff of progressive dreams.</p>
<p>Yet it is the idea of state-run exchanges where the whole scheme falls apart. Part of the Supreme Court ruling that deemed the healthcare law constitutional also <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304729/states-resist-obamacare-michael-tanner">allowed</a> the states to resist setting up those exchanges. Thus, in yet another classic example of unintended consequences, several states have already decided to do just that. As a result, the burden to do so would fall on the federal government. Yet that burden has neither been included in the cost projections of ObamaCare, which have already been revised <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition/316153/obamacare-it-s-still-gateway-single-payer-health-care-sen-tom-coburn">upwards</a> to $1.7 trillion over the next decade, nor has it been part of any additional budget appropriations enacted by Congress. Furthermore, the taxes and/or penalties imposed on companies with 50 or more employees only applies if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies that would be available using these exchanges. Thus it is very possible that individual states could invalidate the entire concept of an employer mandate.</p>
<p>No doubt for many progressives and their top-down centralized government ambitions, the concept of states rights&#8217; itself is one of those &#8220;annoying&#8221; unintended consequences.</p>
<p>In the meantime, 25 percent of Darden&#8217;s workforce is full-time. And as ironical as it gets, every one of their approximately 185,000 employees is offered health insurance. Many of those employees are offered a limited-benefit plan, which may or may not be sufficient to cover all of their needs. But it is certainly better than no plan at all. Unfortunately, limited-benefit plans are yet <em>another</em> casualty of ObamaCare, which is phasing out such coverage, and will eventually ban annual limits on most health plans. Thus, Darden may be permanently phasing out full-time employment in response.</p>
<p>As far as progressives are concerned, all of the above can be filed under the heading of &#8220;unintended consequences,&#8221; with the implication being that they did their best, but no one could foresee what would actually occur. Such preposterous nonsense is no longer acceptable. Progressives and their ideology will be responsible for the millions of Americans who will be relegated to a future of part-time employment&#8211;if they can find employment at all. Moreover, Americans have been far too tolerant regarding the failure of progressives and their &#8220;good intentions.&#8221; In this case, they are little more than perverse disincentives for job creation, for which progressives offer no solutions other than ginning up guilt&#8211;or introducing even more government mandates into the equation: the Obama administration has claimed they can <em>unilaterally</em> rewrite the healthcare law to close the exchange loophole.</p>
<p>Given this administration&#8217;s utter lack of respect for the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers, it is more than likely they will pursue this strategy. But they should expect two results in return. First, any changes in the law will undoubtedly be challenged, likely ending up in the Supreme Court yet again. Second, no matter what the outcome of that challenge will be, Americans will react dynamically to it&#8211;all unintended consequences included.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>What Obama Really Thinks</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/what-obama-really-thinks/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-obama-really-thinks</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/what-obama-really-thinks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:40:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Flynn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=137823</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time and again the president's unscripted remarks strike a deeply offensive tone with the American people. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ObamaBusiness2_20120717_024824.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137833" title="ObamaBusiness2_20120717_024824" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ObamaBusiness2_20120717_024824.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>“Did we not bring you into existence?” Socrates imagined the state saying to him should he have attempted to evade its death sentence. “Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you,” officials might have continued. Athens provided for the “education of children, in which you were also trained.” The message? You owe even your life to your government.</p>
<p>Philosophers still debate whether Plato wished readers of the <em>Crito</em> to embrace or reject this total conception of state power. No such ambiguity surrounds Barack Obama’s remarks crediting the success of individuals to the state.</p>
<p>“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” the president told an audience in Roanoke, Virginia last Friday. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”</p>
<p>For the businessmen who made all those “roads and bridges” happen through generous tax payments, Obama’s assertion was especially insulting. Isn’t it enough that tax-funded construction projects bear the stamp of the Obama administration rather than the taxpayer funders that the president vilifies? The head of state also credits the state for the spontaneous accomplishments of private citizens.</p>
<p>As the website of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) website notes, “On March 3, 2009 President Obama made the commitment that all projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will bear a recovery emblem to make it easier for Americans to see which projects are funded by the ARRA. To meet this commitment, FHWA strongly encourages agencies to use the economic recovery signs on all projects funded by the ARRA.” Governments have spent tens of millions of dollars on signs giving the administration credit. But businessmen now must not even take credit for their own businesses.</p>
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		<title>Socialist or Fascist?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/thomas-sowell/socialist-or-fascist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=socialist-or-fascist</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/thomas-sowell/socialist-or-fascist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2012 04:05:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=134845</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where Obama is really leading us. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-61.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-134847" title="Picture-6" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-61.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a>It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a &#8220;socialist.&#8221; He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.</p>
<p>What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.</p>
<p>Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama&#8217;s point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.</p>
<p>Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous — something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.</p>
<p>Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the &#8220;greed&#8221; of the insurance companies.</p>
<p>The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.</p>
<p>One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.</p>
<p>Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left.</p>
<p>Jonah Goldberg&#8217;s great book &#8220;Liberal Fascism&#8221; cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists&#8217; consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left&#8217;s embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.</p>
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		<title>How Obama Is Hurting Small Business</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/tait-trussell/how-obama-is-hurting-small-business/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-obama-is-hurting-small-business</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:02:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tait Trussell]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=95670</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president has hung the engine of growth and job-making out to dry.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Closed-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95674" title="Closed-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Closed-1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="264" /></a></p>
<p>The Obama administration is recklessly inhibiting the largest creator of employment in our job-shrunken economy—namely small business.</p>
<p>Small firms represent <a href="http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8420">99.7 percent</a> of all employer firms and have generated most net new jobs over the past 15 years, according to the Small Business Administration. Small firms provide from 60 to 70 percent of all new jobs, said Karen Kerrigan, president and CEO of the Small Business &amp; Entrepreneurship Council (SB&amp;EC), representing 100,000 small firms and 250,000 entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>A new survey of 100,000 members of the Small Business &amp; Entrepreneurship Council, according to <a href="http://www.sbecouncil.org/legaction/display.cfm?ID=4382http://www.sbecouncil.org/legaction/display.cfm?ID=4382">congressional testimony</a> of  Ms. Kerrigan, indicates they face a most troublesome economy, with uncertainties and burdens.</p>
<p>A bleak report from the Associated Press June 4 said that economic recovery will probably take longer than envisioned, as the Labor Department reported that unemployment for May had crept up to <a href="http://www.google.com/">9.1 percent</a>. When Obama took office, the jobless rate was 7.8 percent. Only 54,000 jobs were created in May. Private companies hired only 83,000 workers, the fewest in a year.</p>
<p>Ms. Kerrigan said, “May’s job numbers are not surprising given flawed government policies that continue to jack up business costs and fuel uncertainty.”</p>
<p>According to the new survey of the 100,000 members in the Council, 74 percent of small business owners report that higher gasoline prices are adversely affecting their business, and 47 percent say the high gas prices are blocking their plans to hire new employees. Some 41 percent says they already have raised their prices because of gasoline costs.</p>
<p>Twenty-eight percent said they have had to cut employees or their hours worked; 38 percent say they fear if gas prices don’t drop or if they go up still more, their business won’t survive, Ms. Kerrigan told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.</p>
<p>Even if gas prices slide down a bit, they will likely stay relatively high and continue to pinch consumers’ pocketbooks and all the industries that depend on gas.</p>
<p>We would need up to 300,000 new jobs each month to make a major reduction in the unemployment rate, economists say.</p>
<p>Ms. Kerrigan spoke of “deep concerns” small business firms have about the economy and rising costs of health care, slow recovery, administration policy uncertainty, and the “need for a period of stability and certainty to generate positive momentum that will lead to sustained economic growth.” Only 7 percent of the firms surveyed said they used the new small business health care tax credit, “It is too restrictive,” said Ms. Kerrigan.</p>
<p>When it comes to creating jobs, particularly for small firms, Obama just can’t seem to get it right. For his new secretary of commerce, on June 2 he appointed John Bryson, a long-time dedicated <a href="http://conservativedailynews.com/2011/06/john-bryson-commerce-secretary-appointed-for-jobs-or-climate-change/http:/conservativedailynews.com/2011/06/john-bryson-commerce-secretary-appointed-for-jobs-or-climate-change/http:/conservativedailynews.com/2011">environmental extremist</a>. Instead of naming a person who is even slightly connected to the jobs engine of the economy &#8212; small business &#8212; he chooses a man whose only business credentials are as a former California power company executive and director of a couple of large companies.</p>
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		<title>BP&#8217;s Other Oil Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/billy-hallowell/bps-other-oil-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bps-other-oil-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:04:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Billy Hallowell]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61938</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why is the scourge of the Gulf Coast still doing business in Iran?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bp.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61941" title="bp" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bp-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>In light of the catastrophic spill off the Gulf  Coast, BP has become one of the world’s most abhorred companies. While the most recent calamity may be an isolated lapse in judgment and preparedness, this is not the first time that BP has found itself in a high-profile scandal. From the current eco-crisis to disregard for international security, foes accuse BP of placing revenue above all potential cost factors. Following in the footsteps of past offenders like General Electric (GE) and Halliburton, BP is actively engaged in business and trade with Iran, despite the impending threats the nation poses to international peace and stability.</p>
<p>BP’s continued support for Iran adds the energy giant to the ranks of international companies that have defied the international community’s efforts to hold the nuclear-seeking mullahs to account by continuing to do business in the country.</p>
<p>To be sure, doing business with Iran is not necessarily illegal. Current and proposed sanctions do not prevent companies from engaging in oil sales. But with business practices not officially restricted, energy companies like BP continue what some government officials and policy experts see as morally-bankrupt business practices. The company chooses its current policy of Iranian engagement amid the country’s non-compliance with requests by the United Nations and Western powers to contain nuclear ambitions, not to mention increasing evidence that Iran has heavily assisted Iraqi insurgents. Despite these issues, BP appears unwilling to sever its contracts with Iran.</p>
<p>Such lax regulations have some wondering why the United   States and international allies refrain from more restrictive sanctions. According to the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, sanctions on Iranian oil exports would likely increase world-wide costs, which, in turn, would potentially lead to an increase in U.S. gasoline prices well beyond their currently elevated status. Furthermore, officials suspect that an oil embargo would create economic instability for U.S. allies who are already experiencing fiscal woes. As a result, the WSJ reports that “…companies like Shell and <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&amp;symbol=BP">BP</a> PLC continue to do a brisk business buying Iranian oil products.”</p>
<p>When asked about companies engaging in business with Iran, Mark Ware of Vitol Group (energy-training company) <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html">said</a>, “Everyone buys from the Iranians—governments, states, other companies. It’s not subject to any legislation,” serving as yet another prime example of the “because we can” mentality that is likely driving BP’s current policy. Predictably, representatives from BP have been unwilling to speak to the press about the company’s Iranian business connections.</p>
<p>Despite very obvious ethical contradictions, BP <a href="http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9003494&amp;contentId=7006600">claims to embrace honesty and integrity</a>. According to the company’s web site, “As one of the world’s leading companies, we have a responsibility to set high standards: to be, and be seen to be, a business which is committed to integrity.” BP <a href="http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9002630&amp;contentId=7005204">goes on to state</a> that it can best be characterized by four key words – progressive, responsible, innovative and performance-driven. Ironically, recent developments show BP at a loss in each key area, as gallons of oil continue to siphon into Gulf waters. Furthermore, ongoing business relations with a rogue nation do little to validate BP’s self-professed zeal for incorruptibility.</p>
<p>When it comes to choosing whether to engage in Iranian business interests, the ethical answer is explicit, yet BP has been inconsistent and indecisive in its approach. In 2005, BP’s Chief Executive John Browne <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=aQ1w0QuXpOkk&amp;refer=uk-redirectoldpage">said the following</a> regarding the company’s business relations with Iran: “To do business with Iran at the moment would be offensive to the United States, and therefore against BP&#8217;s interests. We&#8217;re very heavily influenced by our American position.&#8221; While this stance appears firmly solidified, Browne took a very different tone in 2001. According to <em>Business Week</em>, at that time Browne was growing impatient with the U.S. government’s strained relations with Iran. According to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_24/b3736091.htm">the article</a>, “Sources close to BP say Browne recently told Vice-President Dick Cheney, who was reviewing U.S. energy policy, that BP had been more than generous in waiting for the situation between the U.S. and Iran to improve.”</p>
<p>According to a 2005 <em>Guardian</em> article, prior to the 9/11 attacks BP was looking to invest in Iran. However, the attacks made such a venture less viable, as Browne said, &#8220;Right now it is impractical for BP because 40% of BP is in the US and we are the largest producer of oil and gas in the US. Politically Iran is not a flyer. One day I hope it is.” Here again, the concern is rooted in politics and the explanation is devoid of any allegiance to the nations in which BP primarily operates. Nowhere does BP’s rhetoric match the company’s penchant for truth and integrity. The focus was on BP’s bottom line.</p>
<p>In 2010, <em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/06/world/iran-sanctions.html">reported on 74 companies</a> who have done business with Iran, while receiving monies from the U.S. government. BP is listed as an “active” Iranian business partner, admitting to providing Iran with gasoline until 2008 – just three years after the company made public claims about its plans to cease working with Iran.  During this time, BP also admits to “…operating two fields and a pipeline” outside the rogue nation; the National Iranian Oil Company had a stake in this property. Currently, the company purchases “small quantities of crude oil” from Iran.</p>
<p>While BP is not necessarily violating the law by economically engaging Iran, U.S. leaders and policy experts fear that companies who ignore Iranian noncompliance with the UN and Western powers are only emboldening the nation’s leaders. Between the Gulf oil spill, which will likely have lasting environmental impact, and BP’s current Iranian policy, the company will likely remain under fire for months to come.</p>
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		<title>Weiner&#8217;s Fool&#8217;s Gold Attack</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/weiners-fools-gold-attack/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=weiners-fools-gold-attack</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 04:04:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Was the Congressman's assault on Goldline really aimed at Glenn Beck?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/amd_weiner.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61147" title="*Mar 13 - 00:05*" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/amd_weiner.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="491" /></a></p>
<p><strong>View </strong><a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Newsreal </strong></span></a><em><a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/05/25/weiners-fools-gold-attack-against-beck/"><br />
</a></em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2463" target="_self">New York Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner</a>, a member of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, is using his public office to attack one of Glenn Beck&#8217;s key sponsors, Goldline, Inc.  It seems that Goldline has committed the heinous crime, according to Weiner, of exploiting Beck&#8217;s scaremongering about the collapsing economy to tout gold as a safe haven and to overcharge for gold coins.</p>
<p>Weiner is abusing the power of his office to intimidate Goldline into dropping its sponsorship of Beck, whom Weiner regards as a serious threat to his <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=93&amp;type=issue" target="_self">progressive agenda</a>. Weiner wrote letters to the SEC and FTC requesting that they investigate Goldline and is proposing punitive legislation against the company.  Under Rep. Weiner&#8217;s plan, Goldline would be required to show consumers (and presumably its competitors) its full business model including what he calls their &#8220;astronomical markups.&#8221;<img title="More..." src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" alt="" /></p>
<p>In launching his fools gold crusade, Weiner said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Goldline &#8230; has recently gained prominence through the use of high-profile conservative spokespeople like Glenn Beck, who use their shows to prey on the public&#8217;s fears of inflation and socialist takeovers while actively promoting the purchase of gold coins as insurance against this purported government overreach.</p></blockquote>
<p>Last night, Weiner came on the &#8220;O&#8217;Reilly Factor&#8221; to defend his charges against Beck and Goldline.  He called Beck Goldline&#8217;s &#8220;shill&#8221; for promoting its sale of the heavily marked-up gold coins.  O&#8217;Reilly pointed out that Goldline was rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and was free to charge whatever it wanted for its coins.  O&#8217;Reilly also said that Weiner was being unfairly selective in going after Beck&#8217;s sponsor and not other gold companies with far worse Better Business Bureau ratings. Weiner&#8217;s response was to attack the credibility of the Better Business Bureau and O&#8217;Reilly himself.</p>
<p>I think that O&#8217;Reilly let Weiner off too easily. Weiner, needless to say, is a leading progressive voice in Congress.  He is also a hypocrite.  For example, he has been one of scandal-ridden <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968" target="_self">ACORN&#8217;s</a> strongest advocates with a 100% voting record in support of their positions.</p>
<p>Weiner also has a 100% voting record in support of positions favored by the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6176" target="_self">Council on American-Islamic Relations  (CAIR)</a>.  CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator of the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6181" target="_self">Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development</a>, an Islamic “charity” which was convicted in 2008 by a federal jury for giving more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.</p>
<p>Weiner sure knows how to pick his friends.  Instead of going after a corrupt leach of the taxpayers &#8211; ACORN &#8211; and a radical Islamic group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood &#8211; CAIR, Weiner is attacking Beck and a perfectly legitimate business rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau.</p>
<p>Weiner says he is just trying to look out for the consumer who, apparently in Weiner&#8217;s eyes, is unable to look out for himself.  Yet the industry contributing the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00001110">most money to Weiner&#8217;s campaigns</a> has been the real estate industry, which has cost consumers and investors billions of dollars in losses.</p>
<p>Gold does not depreciate in value and is not affected by fluctuations in currency values.  Real estate values have plummeted and are affected by variables over which consumers and investors have no control such as interest rates.  In the last three years, the price of gold has increased about 70%.   Since 2003, the price of gold has tripled.  As for housing, from the beginning of the downturn in mid 2006 to June 30, 2009, the median price of an existing home nationwide fell by 30%, or 11% annualized, according to Fiserv Lending Solutions. The median home now sells about what it sold for in 2003.</p>
<p>Why isn&#8217;t Weiner going after <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Democratic%20Coverup%20for%20Fannie%20and%20Freddie.html" target="_self">Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac</a> and his buddies in the real estate industry who helped bring about the real estate collapse?  Could it be that Weiner is their bought-and-paid for shill in Congress?</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Crony Capitalism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/obamas-crony-capitalism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-crony-capitalism</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 04:04:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Chicago's ShoreBank is too politically connected to fail.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obamatoast.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-60951" title="obamatoast" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obamatoast-235x300.gif" alt="" width="235" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;No more bailouts, no more greed, how many profits do you need?&#8221; That&#8217;s been a signature chant of community organizers and Big Labor thugs who have stormed <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">bank</a> offices and financial executives&#8217; private homes decrying corporate welfare over the past several months. But now that the federal government and a coalition of big banking interests are poised to bail out a crony Chicago bank with longtime ties to the Obama administration, Saul Alinsky&#8217;s avenging angels are nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>ShoreBank is a Windy City investment bank with all the right (or, rather, left) ties. Its stated progressive mission isn&#8217;t merely to make good lending decisions, but to engage in Barack Obama-esque social engineering to &#8220;create economic <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">equity</a> and a healthy environment.&#8221; The ShoreBank corporate slogan: &#8220;Let&#8217;s change the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>The company website features a video of Obama in Kenya championing ShoreBank microlending projects overseas. ShoreBank has also touted itself as a &#8220;green&#8221; bank from its founding days — promoting dubious carbon credit programs, subjecting new borrowers to eco-litmus tests (&#8220;we look at how you use water, how you recover water and clean it, how you use energy, if you produce clean energy, how you manage CO2, whether you are offsetting CO2 that your product produces, if you are using sustainably produced materials&#8221;) and encouraging customers to participate in &#8220;EcoDeposits&#8221; to &#8220;directly support the green agenda.&#8221;</p>
<p>Social and environmental justice may make for good Volvo bumper stickers. They do not, however, make for a good bottom line. While the bank was on do-gooder missions around the world, business at home was in trouble. As The Wall Street Journal reported, &#8220;Losses racked up during the recession have left the bank facing a demand to raise new capital or face likely closure by regulators.&#8221;</p>
<p>Enter the Chicago political friends and family of ShoreBank. The ties are long and deep, as the Central Illinois 9/12 Project has been chronicling for months:</p>
<p>— ShoreBank co-founder Jan Piercy was a Wellesley College roommate of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s, who has long supported the bank along with former president Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>— Former ShoreBank Vice Chairman Bob Nash worked for Mrs. Clinton&#8217;s presidential bid as deputy campaign manager. Board of Directors member Howard Stanback is a Hyde Park neighborhood pal of President Obama, who served with Stanback on the board of the radical Woods <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">Fund</a> (where Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers also sat).</p>
<p>— White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett served on the board of Chicago Metropolis 2020 with ShoreBank Director Adele Simmons, former president of the liberal MacArthur Foundation, where she focused on &#8220;climate change&#8221; and &#8220;global governance&#8221; issues.</p>
<p>— The bank and its employees donated some $12,000 to the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, and co-founder Mary Houghton reportedly gave advice to Obama&#8217;s late mother about small business lending issues.</p>
<p>In other words: ShoreBank is too politically connected to fail.</p>
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<p>And now you, the taxpayer, may be on the hook for helping its cronies engineer a special rescue. Fox Business News reported this week that a consortium of large lenders — including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and GE Capital — have partnered with the feds to pitch in a combined $200 million public-private bailout. (In addition, Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky has been crusading for a state-level bailout of the beleaguered bank.) The buzz on both Wall Street and Capitol Hill is that Goldman and perhaps others in the public-private partnership were pressured to lend a hand.</p>
<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be the first time that businesses have felt the Obama squeeze. And it wouldn&#8217;t be the first time that Democrats exploited the financial crisis to milk public money for their banking cronies.</p>
<p>The laggardly House Ethics Committee is still investigating Democrat California Rep. Maxine Waters, who had a personal and financial stake in Boston-based OneUnited, a minority bank that received $12 million in TARP bailout money under smelly circumstances. The bank&#8217;s executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">investor</a> in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. Waters secured meetings between OneUnited execs and Treasury Department officials.</p>
<p>That probe has dragged on for nearly a year, which doesn&#8217;t bode well for fresh GOP demands for an investigation into the shady ShoreBank bailout. House Financial Services Committee ranking minority member Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., has demanded that the White House cough up documentation about any possible overt contact with Goldman about the deal.</p>
<p>Team Obama is smarter than that, of course. To quote Obama&#8217;s environmental czar Carol Browner, who pressured <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">auto</a> industry execs last year to cooperate on a fuel standards increase, they know &#8220;to put nothing in writing, ever.&#8221;</p>
<p>The fingerprints may be missing, but the stench of the Chicago Way is impossible to cover up.</p>
<p><em>Michelle Malkin is the author of &#8220;Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks &amp; Cronies&#8221; (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.</em></p>
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		<title>License to Massacre</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:06:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ralph Peters]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Star British politician Nicholas Clegg blesses Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/clegg.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58713" title="clegg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/clegg.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="339" /></a></p>
<p>Skyrocketing to the top of the prime-ministerial polls, sleek-but-shallow Brit politician Nicholas Clegg apparently misses Saddam.  And Clegg’s not alone in the resurgent dictators’ fan club.</p>
<p>The shiny young face of the UK’s usually lagging third party, the Liberal Democrats, Clegg may upend British politics in the May 6 elections.  One key to his stunning rise has been his dismissal of the “special relationship” with the US as out of date and worthless.</p>
<p>President Obama’s cool with that, but it’s hard to see who would respect a decoupled-from-Washington UK in the morning.  Anti-Americanism plays well in Britain, though.  (What, no Obama effect?).</p>
<p>Anti-Americanism is the <em>first </em>refuge of the scoundrel.</p>
<p>Still, the real danger from Nick Clegg isn’t that he’s going to change everything, but that, behind the campaign flash, he’s the most ideologically backward party leader Britain’s seen since the 1970s.  He damns Cold-War thinking, even as he wallows in it.</p>
<p>And Clegg isn’t alone.  Around the world, bright-young-thing politicians are turning back the clock.  While fashionably damning nukes, they embrace the worst practices of the past with enthusiasm.</p>
<p>To wit: Clegg made a very public point of calling the intervention in Iraq “illegal.”  To the likes of Clegg (a perfect name for a Dickensian villain), it was <em>legal</em> for Saddam to torture, rape and massacre his own countrymen—under the bloody notion that whatever happens within a country’s borders is that state’s business alone.</p>
<p>Of course, Clegg and Co. also overlook Saddam’s two wars of aggression against neighboring states, while averting their polished gazes from the budding democracy in Iraq.  Clegg’s point is just that “America is bad.”  It’s lazy, destructive—but effective—politics.</p>
<p>Does Clegg truly believe that Saddam deserved to remain in power?  Or that the world would be a better place if he still ruled?</p>
<p>At 43, Clegg’s even younger than our own new-model president.  But the two men have in common a heartbreaking (and bone-breaking) sympathy for murderous dictatorships&#8211;as long as the dictator’s roots are on the left.</p>
<p>The immoral notion that a strongman can seize power, then do anything he wants to his countrymen with impunity because his state’s borders are sacrosanct—what I’ve called “the sovereignty con”&#8211;has excused immeasurable suffering.</p>
<p>President Bush, for all his practical errors, grasped that a genocidal dictator’s claims of sovereignty are bogus, that the only true legitimacy comes from the will of the people.</p>
<p>Bush did a great thing inexcusably badly in Iraq.  Still, for a few years, dictators shaped up.  In the end, though, a critical new ideal—that dictators <em>can</em> be held accountable for their inhumanity—was discredited by incompetence on the ground and the stunning bias of the media—whose propagandists, once suckled by Saddam, would sacrifice the lives of others to “get Bush.”</p>
<p>The Bush-haters won (Congratulations!  Why not visit a few mass graves on your next eco-friendly vacation?).  Now we’re back in the old, monstrous tradition of tolerating dictators.</p>
<p>The establishment media are fine with that.  When a journalist of authentic conscience, such as the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, does get into print with a column describing “Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista thugocracy” in Nicaragua, he gets a grand total of six column inches.</p>
<p>Where’s the outrage, either from our elected leaders, or from wannabes such as Clegg, or from the media over Hugo Chavez’s destruction of Venezuela’s once-proud democracy?  At this month’s Nuclear Vanity Summit in D.C., Obama literally embraced Argentina’s corrupt and scheming President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.</p>
<p>Clegg’s pure white-bread, but Obama would be the perfect man to take on African dictators, such as Zimbabwe’s barbarous Robert Mugabe.  And what has our president done for human rights in Africa?  <em>Nothing.</em></p>
<p>This convenient, murderous belief that what happens in Country X stays in Country X condemns <em>billions</em> of human beings to political slavery and, too often, to death.  It means that we continue to pretend that Afghanistan and Somalia are an actual countries, or that the brutal oppression in Eritrea is nobody’s business but that of the country’s dictatorship.  Or that Tehran’s butchers have every right to gun down, imprison, rape and torture protesters.</p>
<p>Well, Nick Clegg, who has an unexpected shot at becoming Britain’s next prime minister, may miss Saddam.  But Iraqis don’t.</p>
<p>As for the US, it seems that the only borders we don’t regard as sacred are our own.</p>
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