Tax Issues:I Wonder If Tom Daschle Still Thinks That The IRS Should "Enforce Our Laws To The Letter"?

"Tax cheaters cheat us all",huh? That's what Tom Daschle said back in 1999,which you can see in this video.Now,it turns out that he was talking about himself.Yes,the tax evader paid his back taxes.But,would it have ever come to that if he wasn't being vetted as the Health & Human Services Secretary? He knew that he owed those taxes,I'm certain of that!Tom Daschle is a hypocrite! Now there is news of yet another nominee with tax issues!Here's more from The NY Times:

"President Obama’s choice for the position of chief White House performance officer has withdrawn from consideration for the post, an administration official said Tuesday, after coming forward with concerns about her tax returns.

Nancy Killefer, appointed by the president last month to a new position to scrutinize government spending, told the administration on Monday that she intended to step down from the position at the Office of Management and Budget. An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not finalized, confirmed that Ms. Killefer’s withdrawal came because of questions with her taxes. Update: In her resignation letter to Mr. Obama, she described the problem as a tax-related issue stemming from Washington, D.C. unemployment.

The withdrawal, first reported by NBC News, came as the White House was already grappling with controversy over the tax returns of Tom Daschle, the president’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Ms. Killefer’s post, as a deputy at O.M.B., required Senate confirmation."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/citing-tax-troubles-an-obama-appointee-withdraws/?partner=rss&emc=rss

How come the IRS didn't ever audit any of these people,like they do regular folks?It's because they are more likely to go after the poor & middle-class Americans!I've been audited before & I am far from being wealthy.Why didn't the IRS ever go after any of these people? They only revealed their own tax problems because they were under a microscope! Wealthy tax cheaters appear to be an issue that the IRS isn't all that concerned about.Here's more from PERRspectives Blog:

"According to the Times, deputy IRS commissioner Kevin Brown confirmed the cuts, but claimed that "because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under President Bush's legislation." Brown also rejected as "preposterous" the notion that IRS looked the other way when it came to rich tax cheaters.

Sadly for Brown, the data suggests otherwise. Six years ago, the I.R.S. reported that 85 percent of large taxable gifts it audited shortchanged the government. And as the Times details:

Over the last five years, officials at both the I.R.S. and the Treasury have told Congress that cheating among the highest-income Americans is a major and growing problem.
Which is exactly the way Congressional Republicans want it. As David Cay Johnston describes in his book Perfectly Legal, the GOP during the Clinton administration waged an all-out war on the IRS, turning the priorities for auditing Americans upside-down. As Senator William Roth's Finance Committee held hearings in 1997 and 1998, Mississippi's Trent Lott and Alaska's Frank Murkowski decried the IRS' "Gestapo-like tactics." Don Nickles of Oklahoma raged, "The IRS is out of control!" Congress went on to pass and Bill Clinton signed the IRS Reform and Restructuring Act in 1998.

Those reforms in essence gave wealthier Americans carte blanche to cheat and fundamentally undermined tax fairness in the United States. Within one year, property seizures for unpaid taxes dropped by 98%. Liens were sliced by three quarters and levies on bank accounts by two-thirds. Johnston describes (p. 134) the overnight shift of tax policing onto poorer Americans:

In 1999, for the first time, the poor were more likely than the rich to have their tax returns audited. The overall rate for people making less than $25,000 a year was 1.36%, compared with 1.15% of returns by those making $100,000 or more...Over the previous 11 years audit rates for the poor had increased by a third, while falling 90 percent for the top tier of Americans.
The IRS' free ride for the wealthy was accompanied by a crackdown on Americans who qualified for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Targeting lower-income Americans "who work hard and play by the rules", the popular and often bipartisan EITC has long been in the cross hairs of the GOP class warriors like Nickles, who called it "a welfare program." The result, as Johnston details (p. 132):

The IRS audited 397,000 of the working poor who applied for the credit in 2001, eight times as many audits as it conducted of people making $100,000 or more. That works out to one of every 47 returns seeking the credit, compared to about one in every 366 taxpayers who did not apply for it.
Fast forward to 2006. The Bush administration, by hook or by crook, remains determined to kill the estate tax. Since 2001, President Bush and the Republican leadership have pushing to eliminate the so-called "death tax," a levy paid by only 1% of American families. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates abolition of the estate tax would burn a $1 trillion hole in the U.S. budget over 10 years. A supposed compromise version passed by the House GOP in June, that would raise the eligible estate size while cutting the rate from 45% to the capital gains rate of 15%, would be nearly as destructive. CBPP forecasts that the House bill would cost American taxpayers $750 billion in lost revenue and increased interest payments on the national debt.

As with most initiatives of the Bush administrations, the motivation and intent of the IRS cuts is quite transparent. As John Hruska, an IRS estate tax lawyer in New York put it, "This is not a game the poor will win, but the rich will." The result, as Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union summed it up, "a lot of taxes that should be paid will go uncollected, and that impacts every taxpayer who is paying their fair share."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the entire article here:http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000534.htm

David Duke Calls The Republican Party"The Last Major Party Of White Redoubt"!

David Duke is the perfect example of why human beings are classified as animals!He has been profiled on the Anti-Defamation League's website as an extreme racist!So,isn't it ironic & ridiculous for him to brand Michael Steele a black racist? I am so glad that Keith Olbermann tells it like it is! David Duke is one of the worst "beings" that I have ever heard of! I can't attach human to being in his case.There really isn't anything human about him but his appearance. Let's just call him sub-human.Here's an excerpt of his profile:

"Yet his reversion to overt, as opposed to veiled, racism did not douse his political hopes. In December 1998, Duke announced that he would run for the Congressional seat being vacated by Robert L. Livingston, in Louisiana’s First Congressional District. Achieving this goal was not wholly implausible; Duke had carried this district in his campaigns for United States Senate and governor in 1990 and 1991. Once again, he positioned himself as an anti-government conservative who stood up for the little man against programs such as affirmative action, minority set-asides and welfare. And once again, Duke’s message seemed to hit a nerve among some frustrated white voters who were willing to overlook his past. He received one out of every five ballots cast in the district and placed third in the election. These results apparently validated his assertion that he would fly under the radar of public opinion research, which projected him winning a far smaller percentage of the vote. Indeed, despite the pre-election polling numbers, both mainstream G.O.P. and local business leaders feared a potential Duke victory. “We were sweating bullets,” said Ken Johnson, an aide to Representative W.J. Tauzin, the Republican dean of Louisiana’s Congressional delegation. On the other hand, Duke’s showing seemed to indicate that, while he could still stir contention and anxiety and had a reliable constituency, this constituency was modest and unlikely ever to expand. Moreover, Duke had increasingly come to be seen as both enamored with the publicity and money of campaigns and disinclined actually to win and serve.

Following his defeat, Duke stated that while he had no immediate plans to stage another political candidacy, he was “absolutely committed to spending the rest of my life as a spokesman for the rights of European Americans.” He turned to a strategy that several other racist organizations have also adopted, focusing on ethnic themes designed to appeal to alienated whites, especially minority crime rates, immigration and so-called “Confederate heritage” issues such as flying the Confederate flag on state property.

Now a self-styled “civil rights activist,” in January 2000, Duke announced the formation of a new organization, the National Organization for European American Rights. Aping contemporary civil rights groups, NOFEAR addressed “European American” concerns. “Just as African Americans have the NAACP and Mexican Americans have La Raza,” Duke said, “European-Americans now have the National Organization for European American Rights, to actively defend their rights and heritage in the United States.”

NOFEAR was intended to be an antidote to the alleged “massive discrimination” faced by whites from the nation’s growing population of minorities. According to Duke, “European Americans face a situation where we’re going to be outnumbered and outvoted in our own country.” Low birthrates, interracial marriages and immigration rates were cited by Duke as key factors reducing the white share of the population. The NOFEAR home pages on the davidduke.com Web site maintain that “the civil rights of European Americans are being violated by affirmative action, forced integration and anti-European immigration policies.…We face cultural discrimination in the media and education.…An example is the media hate crime hysteria that highlights and publicizes any white crime against minorities.”

At the launching of NOFEAR, Duke told reporters at the National Press Club that the alleged ongoing destruction of white people was a “genocide.” In a January 26, 2000, letter to the Shreveport Times rebutting a critical editorial, Duke described European Americans as “internally displaced people” entitled to the same consideration as refugees. In June 2001, threatened by a trademark lawsuit, Duke renamed his group the European-American Rights Organization.

Duke repeatedly stresses the need for white Southerners and European Americans generally to organize to preserve their rights and heritage. “These minority activists are not only after Southern heritage,” he warns, “Eventually they plan to erase the heritage and history of European Americans in the United States and ... [we plan] to stop them.” As evidence, Duke has cited black school board members in New Orleans who called George Washington an “immoral example” for children and voted to remove his name from a public school, as well as the Richmond, Virginia, City Council that removed a mural of General Robert E. Lee from a flood wall in 1999."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the whole profile here:http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/duke.asp

Jay Electronica & Erkyah

Erkyah Badu has a way of picking equally talented musicians to create a baby with.It's like the ultimate collaboration for her.Her new offspring was produced with none other than hip hop whiz kid,Jay Electronica.Now,you have to be a true hip-hop head to know about this dude.If you don't know about his music & production credits,then watch the interview that I included.Here's more about their new baby from Celebrity Baby Blog:

"Singer/songwriter Erykah Badu and her boyfriend Jay Electronica have welcomed their first child together! The couple’s baby girl was born today, February 1st, at “1:30 p.m. exactly,” according to the proud papa who, along with Erykah, provided updates throughout the day via Twitter. Sharing that their daughter had arrived, Jay writes,

“It’s the happiest day of my life.”

While no other details — including a name — have been released, per Jay’s updates, Erykah, 37, delivered her third child naturally. “My daughter is ready. Labor has begun. Everybody stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We’re waiting on midwife to show up,” revealed the excited dad earlier today. From the sound of things, Jay, along with Erykah’s 4 ½-year-old daughter Puma Rose had things under control! “I’m doing foot squeezes and foot rubs when the contractions hit. Puma is rubbing her hands.”(END OF EXCERPT) Read the rest here:http://celebrity-babies.com/2009/02/01/erykah-badu-and-jay-electronica-welcome-a-daughter/