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Hundreds of Capitol Hill Staffers Didn’t Pay Taxes in 2010

As Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich parse the details of their individual tax returns, hundreds of Capitol Hill employees are taking taxpayer dollars to the bank without paying their share.

Internal Revenue Service data show that 3 percent of Senate staffers and more than 4 percent of House staffers owed taxes in 2010, adding up to about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes. More than 98,000 civilian federal employees were delinquent on their taxes in 2010, adding up to more than $1 billion in taxes owed, according to the IRS.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, last year introduced a bill to require federal employees to be fired if they are “seriously delinquent” on their taxes. Seriously delinquent is defined as outstanding federal tax debt for which a public lien has been filed. The bill was passed by committee in June but is still waiting for a vote from the full House.

“If you work for the federal government and you don’t pay your taxes, you should be fired,” Chaffetz said in a statement provided to FoxNews.com. “It is totally unacceptable to live on the federal payroll and not pay your taxes.  The Obama administration has totally ignored this cheating. Congress should pass my bill and hold federal workers accountable.”

Under current law, only IRS employees can be fired for not paying their federal income taxes, according to Chaffetz’s office.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in 2010 introduced a similar bill, to make delinquent taxpayers ineligible for federal employment.

“Legislators and government employees should not be exempt from the laws they write and enforce,” Coburn said when introducing the bill. “The very nature of federal employment and the concept inherent to ‘public service’ demands those being paid by taxpayers contribute their fair share of taxes. they should lead by example.”

The number of civilian federal employees delinquent on their taxes has been on a downward trend since 2004, but the amount owed has increased significantly — from just under $600 million in 2004 to more than $1 billion in 2010.

About 2 percent of active duty military and military reservists owed a total of nearly $340 million in taxes in 2010. about 2 percent of retired civilian federal employees and almost 4 percent of military retirees owed a total of $2 billion.  

<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/24/hundreds-capitol-hill-staffers-didnt-pay-taxes-in-2010/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/24/hundreds-capitol-hill-staffers-didnt-pay-taxes-in-2010/Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:03:49 GMT”>Hundreds of Capitol Hill Staffers Didn’t Pay Taxes in 2010


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    Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by admin - January 26, 2012 at 3:01 pm

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    New York City: The Birthplace of Reaganomics — Daily Intel

    With President Obama’s announcement that he’d like to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal budget, there’s now something of an actual, real-life bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C., about what America needs now: less government spending. The Washington Post’s news story about Obama’s plan compared it to Ronald Reagan’s budget-slashing efforts in the eighties; so, in an unhappy blog post, did Paul Krugman. That’s not surprising: almost every account of American politics that mentions the post–great Society backlash against government spending will cite Reagan. but the first large-scale test of small-government economic principles actually occurred several years before Reagan’s presidency — right here, under a Democratic administration in godless, liberal new York.

    Though the fanatic pursuit of smaller government and lower taxes wasn’t unheard of earlier in the twentieth century — see Barry Goldwater’s run for president in 1964 — the Republican party at the outset of the seventies predominately tended toward positions on taxes and the budget that we might now think of as liberal. In 1971, Richard Nixon called himself “a Keynesian in economics.” under President Ford the highest income bracket was still taxed at a rate of 70 percent, and the budget kept growing as much under Nixon and Ford as it did under Kennedy and Johnson. but while Ford was overseeing a still-expanding government, new York City was already cutting spending at drastic rates.

    In the early seventies, new York had been the closest thing in America to a welfare state. It offered free colleges, a vast public hospital system, and a heavily subsidized public transportation system (35-cent subway tokens!), and it paid its large contingent of unionized public employees well, if not handsomely. but Wall Street and the national economy cooled off in the late sixties and early seventies, and to bear the expense, City Hall began borrowing — eventually making itself liable for $12 billion worth of municipal bonds. by the spring of 1975, with the economy still worsening and bond interest adding up, the city found itself on the brink of default.

    To prevent bankruptcy, (Democratic) Mayor Abe Beame and the state and federal governments formed a consortium of real estate executives, financiers, and political power brokers called the Municipal Assistance Corporation (a.k.a. “Big MAC”) to hold the city’s purse strings. MAC issued bonds to pay the city’s bills, but also fundamentally changed the way the city taxed and spent. Labor unions were publicly excoriated, wages frozen, and thousands laid off. Tuition was imposed at city colleges, hospitals were closed, and subway fares were hiked. on the other side of the ledger, corporate taxes were eased, the stock-transfer tax all but done away with, and real-estate tax assessments lowered, all in the hopes of attracting large corporations to Manhattan.

    The men who instituted new York’s response to its fiscal crisis helped trigger the conservative revolution of the coming decade, with its nationwide cuts to social programs and easing of taxes on businesses and high earners. one of creators of Big MAC was William E. Simon, who was Gerald Ford’s Treasury secretary at the time; while his boss was relatively moderate, Simon’s work with the city gave him a chance to put his small-government beliefs directly into practice, and he’d later found a free-enterprise advocacy foundation and become a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and a member of the Hoover Institute. In 2007 the Washington Post called him “a legendary architect of the modern conservative movement.” another key MAC player was Citibank head Walter Wriston; the experience was his first foray into the public sector, and afterward he chaired Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Board and became a member of the Manhattan Institute’s Board of Trustees.

    “In a lot of ways new York was a model,” says labor historian and Queens College professor Joshua Freeman, “for this idea that we can’t afford this way of life and that the [social welfare] system doesn’t work, that it’s broken. that the public sector can’t do everything, and that the private sector can do most things better.” Thirty-five years later, the public sector is in crisis again. and though modern deficit hawks like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie might not realize it, when they advocate big cuts to government spending, they’re using a playbook that was written in new York.

    New York City: The Birthplace of Reaganomics — Daily Intel


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      Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by admin - February 20, 2011 at 6:00 pm

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      Obama gets 12 stitches after elbowing on hoops court – MassCops

      by Perry Bacon Jr.
      Washington Post Staff Writer
      Friday, November 26, 2010; 10:04 PM

      in a Friday morning pickup game, President Obama was accidentally elbowed by one of his fellow players, forcing him to get 12 stitches in his lip, the White House said. Obama received the stitches under local anesthesia in the doctor’s office on the ground floor of the White House after he returned home from the game at Fort McNair, a military base where he often plays.
      The White House at first did not identify the person who went up for a shot and elbowed Obama, who was playing defense. But later Friday, administration officials released a statement from Rey Decerega, the director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, who injured Obama.

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn…112604855.html

      The whole Country, individualy, needs to buy Rey a beer.

      Obama gets 12 stitches after elbowing on hoops court – MassCops


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      Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by - November 27, 2010 at 1:00 am

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      Report: Obama Offers Netanyahu “Far-Reaching Promises” for Settlement Freeze

      The page you requested cannot be found on the CBS News website.

      The page may have been removed, had its name changed, or is just temporarily unavailable.

      To locate the page you are looking for, please try one of the following:

      <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20018009-503544.htmltag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20018009-503544.htmlWed, 29 Sep 2010 15:31:22 GMT 00:00″>Report: Obama Offers Netanyahu “Far-Reaching Promises” for Settlement Freeze


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      Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by - October 3, 2010 at 11:00 am

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      Obama Girl plays Wii


      What happens when politics and Obama Girl’s bootay collide? MORE BARELY: Click here to subscribe! www.youtube.com Follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com www.twitter.com Check out our websites www.barelypolitical.com http Friend us on Facebook & Myspace www.facebook.com www.myspace.com Leave us a voicemail 1-(646)-827-2202 Watch Amber’s channel www.youtube.com –

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      25 comments - What do you think?  Posted by admin - May 5, 2010 at 10:31 am

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      Obama Plays HORSE with Clark Kellogg


      CBS Sports’ Clark Kellogg had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a game of HORSE (POTUS in this case) with President Obama. See how the former pro fared against the commander in chief.

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      25 comments - What do you think?  Posted by admin - April 28, 2010 at 1:19 am

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      House Recommends Calling 1915 Armenian Killings Genocide

      Washington (CNN) — Turkey recalled its envoy to the United States following a vote by a congressional panel passing a resolution calling the killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey genocide.

      The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly passed a measure Thursday recommending that the United States recognize the killings as genocide.

      The measure passed 23-22 and will now head to the full House.

      In response, Turkey ordered its ambassador to the United States home for “consultation,” foreign ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told CNN.

      The nearly century-old issue has placed Congress and the White House in the middle of a political minefield, balancing moral considerations with domestic and international concerns.

      The Obama administration had urged the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to pass the resolution, warning it could damage U.S.-Turkish relations and jeopardize efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and its neighbor Armenia. The two do not share formal diplomatic relations.

      “We are concerned that the possible action … would … impede the positive momentum that we see in the Turkey-Armenia normalization process,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters ahead of the vote.

      He added that the United States was concerned about the effect the vote could potentially have on U.S.-Turkish relations. Turkey, among other things, is considered a strong American ally and is home to a critical U.S. air base.

      Armenia‘s foreign minister, Edward Nalbandian, said his country highly appreciates the committee’s vote. “This is another proof of the devotion of the American people to universal human values and is an important step toward the prevention of the crimes against humanity,” he said. The Armenian National Committee of America said the passage of the measure shows that “Turkey doesn’t get a vote or a veto in the U.S. Congress.”

      Turkish officials vehemently opposed the measure.

      “Turkey is saddened by the bill that has been accepted in the Foreign Affairs Committee today,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Web site said.

      “We condemn this bill that accuses the Turkish nation of a crime it has not committed. The people who support this bill have adopted a wrong and unfair attitude, ignoring the differences of opinion of expert historians and historical facts. The bill has been prepared with tangible historical mistakes regarding the 1915 incidents and with a completely subjective attitude,” the statement said.

      A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman recently issued a public warning that passage of a resolution labeling the World War I killings as genocide “would harm U.S.-Turkish relations.” Turkish officials have also warned that passing the resolution could hurt a historic agreement aimed at normalizing relations between Turkey and Armenia, and reopening their long-closed border.

      “It would harm the normalization process,” spokesman Ozugergin said. “And it is wrong. The substance is also wrong.”

      Turkey officially denies a genocide took place in the last days of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Ankara instead says that Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians massacred each other on the killing fields of World War I.

      Historians have extensively documented the Ottoman military’s forced death march of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians into the Syrian desert in 1915. every April 24, Armenians worldwide observe a day for those killed.

      The killings decimated the Armenian population in what is modern-day eastern Turkey.

      The government in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and influential Armenian diaspora groups have been urging countries around the world to formally label the events of 1915 “genocide.”

      “I don’t pretend to be a professional historian,” Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, D-California, said ahead of the vote. “But the vast majority of experts … agree that the tragic massacres of the Armenians constitute genocide.”

      Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, acknowledged that Turkey is an “important, strong [and] necessary ally of the United States.” but “overriding all of that,” he said, “is the issue of justice and the issue of history. … History has to be righted.”

      Opponents of the resolution had expressed sympathy toward the victims of the 1915 killings but said current political concerns took priority.

      Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, praised the committee’s “sincere effort” to illuminate “a dark chapter in history” but said the committee should not pass the measure.

      “I do not minimize the horror that took place,” he said. but “now is not the time for this committee of the American Congress to take up the measure that is now before us.”

      Turkey is a strategic partner of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pence said.

      Furthermore, the logistical support provided by the U.S. base in Incirlik, Turkey, is a “staple” of American power in the Middle East, he said. “In a time of war,” the United States should not “take the relationship [with Turkey] for granted.”

      Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, said Congress should not do anything to undermine the Turkish government, which is a “secular alternative model for the Muslim world.”

      “I hate this vote,” he said. “The United States has a great deal at stake in the Turkish relationship,” and passing the resolution would jeopardize that relationship. Congress shouldn’t “pontificate on this issue” and then pretend “there will be no consequences,” he said.

      Last year, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Armenia signed a series of protocols aimed at establishing embassies in Ankara and Yerevan. The U.S.-, European- and Russian-backed agreement also called for the creation of an international committee of historians to examine archives and “restore mutual confidence between the two nations.”

      In October 2009, Armenia’s president traveled to Turkey to attend a historic soccer match between the two countries’ national teams. despite this round of “football diplomacy,” the diplomatic overture between the two capitals has slowed in recent months.

      In 2007, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a previous resolution recognizing the Armenian “genocide.” The Turkish government protested by temporarily recalling its ambassador from Washington.

      The resolution did not make it to the House floor.

      CNN’s Ivan Watson, Elise Labott and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

      House Recommends Calling 1915 Armenian Killings Genocide


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      Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by - April 24, 2010 at 9:00 am

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      Fox News Dishonest Editing of Obama Judicial Nominee Goodwin Liu?


      20 MORE examples of Fox News biased video editing at www.youtube.com Tell the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve Goodwin Liu at judiciary.senate.gov OVER 100 MORE examples of Fox News Bias at www.youtube.com Dishonest video editing, namecalling, and personal attacks were all tools used by Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” last week to smear the good name of Prof. Goodwin Liu, President Barack Obama’s well qualified nominee to be a judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as I show in this video. The clip of Bill O’Reilly accusing Jon Stewart of taking clips out of context comes from my previous video titled “Fox News Edits Out Jon Stewart Beating Bill O’Reilly?” that you can see at www.youtube.com The image of my “Fox News Bias in its Video Editing” playlist comes from the YouTube playlist page at www.youtube.com The clips I use of Bill O’Reily and Megyn Kelly discussing Prof Goodwin Liu come from a segment on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” broadcast April 1, 2010, a full copy of which is available on Media Matters’ website at mediamatters.org The clips I use of Prof. Goodwin Liu appearing on a 2008 PBS panel discussing the film “Traces of the Trade” comes from video available online at www.archive.org The images I use of Prof, Goodwin Liu’s resume comes from the UC Berkeley Law School webpage at www.law.berkeley.edu And, finally, the image I use of contact information for the Senate Judiciary Committee comes from the webpage at …

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      25 comments - What do you think?  Posted by admin - April 18, 2010 at 8:23 am

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      Obama Girl + Obama Duet!


      Obama Girl duet! Song written and mixed by Michael Gregory from AUTO TUNE THE NEWS!!! Performed by Leah Kauffman and Barack Obama. Edited by Michael Stevens. MORE BARELY: Click here to subscribe! www.youtube.com Follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com www.twitter.com Check out our websites www.barelypolitical.com http Friend us on Facebook & Myspace www.facebook.com www.myspace.com Leave us a voicemail 1-(646)-827-2202 Watch Amber’s channel www.youtube.com –

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      25 comments - What do you think?  Posted by admin - April 17, 2010 at 3:23 am

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      Chris Matthews is the New Obama Girl


      Hope you’ll grab a hardcopy of my book, PAPER, INK, & WHAT I THINK Available here: machosauceproductions.com or download it at AMAZON KINDLE www.amazon.com Also my 20 LB. SLEDGE CD and MACHO SAUCE Shirts! cd’s can be ordered from my website, or you can download the whole EP OR individual tracks here: www.cdbaby.com This video AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY AT PJTV.COM AFTER 02/08/10 Hope ya visit us to check out more zonation as well as Bill Whittle, Al Sonja Shmidt, Andrew Klavan, Steven Crowder, Joe Hicks, Glen Reynolds sand more!

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      25 comments - What do you think?  Posted by admin - April 13, 2010 at 2:31 pm

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