John Kerry: If Only Voters Weren't So Dumb Dems Would Be Doing Much Better

I hope John Kerry keeps talking. Maybe he and Vice President Bite Me can go on tour, campaigning for Democrats.

Boston Herald: A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

The reason Democrats are in trouble is that people are paying attention! So they'll know Kerry's insulting them.

Doug Powers adds:

If this doesn’t bump up Dem poll numbers, Kerry’s going to start riffing with the “voters mommas are so fat…” jokes to see if that helps.

Heh!

Cross posted from The Lonely Conservative

John Kerry Bails on Massachusetts Sales Tax: Kerry Takes New Yacht to Rhode Island

Super gazillionaire Teresa Heinz and also extraordinarily wealthy hubby Senator John Kerry have a new yacht which berths in Newport, Rhode Island, not Nantucket, Mass where the couple summers. The craft is fabulously expensive and would have cost the Kerry's a six-figure sales tax hit had they berthed the "Isabel" at their summering spot in Nantucket.

John Kerry's fabulously expensive yacht, The Isabel

If the Kerry's keep the yacht away from Massachusetts for more than six months, they will avoid the state sales tax, AND and annual excise tax estimated at about $70,000.00 - annually:

Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

An ANNUAL excise tax? Oh well, they can afford it (that's the Liberal view when it's a conservative being taxed) but dang! that's unAmerican (that's the conservative viewpoint no matter who is buying).

Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

Lindsey Graham Walks on Climate and Amnesty

Sen. Lindsey Graham has certainly been in the news this week. Republicans have been more than a little frustrated that the South Carolina senator has announced he is working with Democrats on Cap and Trade (Climate) and Immigration Reform (Amnesty for Illegal Aliens). The question has been: why would he do that, knowing that a majority of Republicans want neither?

Lindsey Graham                        John Kerry

Graham has been working behind the scenes on a Cap and Tax bill and Amnesty with Senators John Kerry and Chuck Schumer. A video made the rounds last week from ALIPAC president, William Gheen, saying that he believed Senator Graham was "compromised." His reasoning was unfortunate, but he intimates that Graham could be blackmailed (my word, not Gheens), and if that is the case, Graham needs to rethink a few things, and reassure the voters.

 Graham has walked on the bill and taken his "bipartisan" support with him. This is a real dilemma, but it just may get Graham out of a tough spot, in light of Gheen's statement. Democrats will not hold-up Immigration, so this can get Graham out of both Climate Change and Immigration, and make the South Carolina Republican Party happy (they have censured him twice in recent months) and make his fellow Republicans in the Senate ecstatic.

Graham's departure likely dooms any chance of passing a climate bill this year. He is the sole Republican working with Sens. John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) on a compromise they had planned to unveil Monday.

Here is a portion of a letter Graham sent to the Cap and Tax Committee:

"I want to bring to your attention what appears to be a decision by the Obama Administration and Senate Democratic leadership to move immigration instead of energy. Unless their plan substantially changes this weekend, I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time. I will not allow our hard work to be rolled out in a manner that has no chance of success." 

A curious response, but smart, because voters are increasingly unhappy with the perpetual loose-canon- ball-Senator Graham. If he scuttles back to his Party, which is desperately trying to reign-in the regime's "regulate the world" doctrine, he will do his country a huge service and probably be re-elected in 2012.

Linked by NetRightNation

Health Care and the Impact on Charitable Donations

While leaving my New Year's greetings at some of my favorite blogs, I made a stop at Observations. James had an article posted on health care and its impact on charitable giving. In a nutshell, it seems Senators Rockefeller and Kerry decided that if only a 35 cent deduction on each charitable dollar was given back to the donor as a tax deduction, that will leave a tidy sum for government to apply to the mammoth cost of their health care bill.

I found this very interesting, and I think you will too. Note that President Obama is prepared to deny a portion of the deduction to taxpayers, who give out of compassion, and then turn around and give big-dollar grants to...whom? You can be certain only Liberal-pet-non-profits will benefit from this new government program, while your church and local organizations suffer. Really, its disgraceful.
Damage from health care reform reached beyond health care boundaries
by James Shott at Observations

Opponents of so-called health care reform believe terrible things will happen if some version of it passes and gets signed into law. Most of the damage will occur in obvious places, such as to doctors and hospitals, to those who are happy with their existing health insurance, and to everyday Americans, whose taxes and cost of living will rise.

But it will also affect areas outside health care, like private charity.

“How can reforming the health care system and health insurance industry affect charities,” you may wonder? It may seem like a weird disconnect, but it does because, like so much of what liberalism attempts in pursuit of a “perfect” society, it produces consequences that either are unforeseen, or those consequences get written off as acceptable sacrifices in order to achieve what liberals see as the greater good. So, if charities suffer in taking over the health care system, that’s okay.

During formulation of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill, a group including Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and John Kerry (D-MA) proposed an idea that would raise billions of dollars in additional tax revenue to help offset the enormous costs of the health care takeover by limiting the value of itemized deductions, such as donations to charity. The proposal would hold the value of charitable deductions at 35 cents on a dollar, while the top tax rate rises to more than 39 percent when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011.

And when Senate Democrats passed their unpopular health care bill in the middle of that snowy night on a strict 60-40 party-line vote, Democrats said “Merry Christmas” to America’s poor by reducing funding for charities that assist them by billions of dollars each year.

Howard Husock, the Vice President of Policy Research and the Director of the Manhattan Institute's Social Entrepreneurship Award, explained that “when a similar proposal was advanced early this year by President Obama, the long-time head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Martin Feldstein, estimated it would lead to a $7 billion drop in charitable giving.”

Charities have already taken a big hit, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which reported that six of ten United Way chapters saw a decline in giving last year, totaling $4 billion.

Indeed, a coalition of 15 major charitable organizations that are concerned about the situation wrote a letter to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) stating that “charities have seen an increased demand for their services as individuals and families struggle with financial uncertainty.”

The underlying assumption of the Democrat’s scheme seems to be that “we’ve got to get money from anywhere and everywhere to offset the exorbitant costs of our health care reform, and government can do a better job of spending charitable dollars than people can.” So, to pay for its takeover of one-sixth of the private economy, the federal government now will take money the people intended for the charities they deem important, and will substitute the judgment of individual Americans with the judgment of a federal bureaucracy in deciding how the funding should be used and which charities will get funding.

In preparation for this not-yet-collected treasure, the Obama Administration has already announced the establishment of a new White House Office of Social Innovation which will make grants directly from the White House to individual non-profit organizations.
And, just as some industries jumped on the health care reform and cap-and-trade bandwagons to insure their survival against an overly aggressive government, some non-profit organizations support this idea, putting themselves in the position to attract “government money” that will enable them to survive and thrive, even as charitable donations drop by billions of dollars a year.

When government calls the shots instead of the people, those intended charitable dollars will be used to support the administration’s purposes, not the people’s purposes, and certain “preferred” organizations and causes get a subsidy. “This government-led giving contrasts sharply with the wide-ranging, sometimes quirky, but historically creative nature of American philanthropy,” Mr. Husock said.

Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said it's impossible to calculate the exact effects of all the tax changes, but he said the overall result is clear – less philanthropic giving. "This will lead people to give less to charities if they behave the way they've behaved in the past," he said. "We've already seen a drop in giving as a result of the economic collapse. On top of that, this will just reduce the amount of giving."

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag has noted, however, that the recovery act calls for “$100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period of economic difficulty." Do Senate Democrats and the President really think that taking more money from those citizens with the most to give to charity, and reducing charitable giving, and then replacing billions of lost donations with a few million dollars controlled by the government will have no negative implications?
Will the American people recognize that the measures President Obama and the Congress are promoting will wreck their country in time to stop them?

Tax Liens Against John Kerry

Senator John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign has a $819,848 tax lien filed against it. Kerry says it is all a mistake - a clerical error, the IRS says it is a debt that needs to be paid.

John Kerry

The Kerry campaign says it paid the taxes in 2005. The IRS said no taxes had been filed, so Kerry et al refiled in ...2008, in response to an IRS request. The IRS says they have "made a demand for payment," but the lien remains unpaid.

The Senator charges that the IRS "mishandled payroll tax forms," and that the W-2's were correctly filed by his campaign in 2005. The IRS will not comment because they say it is against the law for them to do so.

According to OpenSecrets.org, Kerry's 2007 net worth ranges from $284 million to $388 million. In 2204, much closer to the campaign, his net worth was estimated between $236 million to $312 million. During the 2004 elections, it was believed that Kerry's wife, Teresa Hines Kerry, the heir to the Hines Ketchup fortune, was worth billions.

And Then Came Obama: Not the Change They've Been Looking For

Poznan, Poland: Greenpeace activists atop the Poznan railway station Photo credit: Getty Images

Everyone from the United Nations to Greenpeace is irritated and impatient at the U.S.'s refusal to sign on to commitments to lower greenhouse gases at even greater levels than prescribed by the soon-to-be-defunct Kyoto Treaty. However... At last week's Pozan, Poland U.N. Global Warming "Framework" Conference, the White House stalled, wanting to leave global warming and climate change decisions to the next administration - and team Obama waffled, shocking the international community, which expects great strides into curbing greenhouse gases from the new President. Obama, who now must work within the shell of a Nation in financial distress and a possible Republican filibuster on Cap and Trade, will begin administrating in the real world. The Washington Post is quoting an unnamed "top U.N. negotiator" on global warming, as remaining "confident that the United States could sign on to a global pact next year even without congressional action." Assuming the unnamed source is NOT Senator John Kerry, Kerry is saying exactly the same thing from Poland this week.

It will be like the difference between night and day," Kerry, of Massachusetts, said of Obama's enthusiasm for action against climate change after what he said were eight years of inaction under President George W. Bush. He told Reuters support in the United States for climate action was strong enough to let Obama sign up for emissions cuts under a U.N. pact to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 even if the Senate had not by then agreed matching U.S. climate laws.

In another interview, Kerry says that passing Cap and Trade will probably not be possible because:

...political and regional disputes — along with the complex legislative process — will make passage of a cap-and-trade bill before the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen next December highly unlikely.

So, the U.S. will not have time to pass necessary laws, but any ratification of U.S. law isn't necessary anyway, - and any opportunity for a filibuster by more conservative Senate thinkers isn't pertinent. Obama can do it without Congress, and even congressional aides are quoted as saying:

...passage of legislation before Copenhagen was not needed to have the United States sign on to a new global climate deal.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland and Bali have been one drama after the other, beginning with the Bali conference one year ago - explained by the Wonk Room's guest blogger, Andrew Light: According to Light, the U.S. delegation refused to sign on to the Bali Roadmap. At that conference:

(1) [would have] ended in utter failure if not for Al Gore and a few others who saved the conference by convincing outraged delegates to wait one year for a new administration ready to join the world community." (2) The pervading fear here that the Obama administration will not embrace the next iteration of the Kyoto Protocol climate change treaty, set to be decided a year from now at the next UN climate meeting in Copenhagen, because they will not have a national cap and trade agreement through Congress by that time.

Another report had the conference secretariat leaving in tears:

(3)...a direct intervention of the UN Secretary-General and the Indonesian President to appeal to the countries to make a final deal, a seemingly recalcitrant United States holding the entire meeting to ransom, before several dramatic and angry appeals led finally to its announcement that it would "join the consensus.

(4) [now in Poznan Poland] And then came Obama. Expectations here couldn’t have been higher that the results of the US election were a complete game changer for the next phase of the Kyoto process. Were they just wrong?

In this atmosphere of doubt and disappointment a session on Monday evening [advertised] as including Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Dick Lugar (R-IN) was understandably packed to the gills and dozens couldn’t get in the door. With no official representatives here from the Obama transition team, and with Bush’s negotiators making sometimes bizarre pronouncements about Obama’s intentions or lack thereof, a message of clarity and hope from senior Obama advisors was a must see for this international audience. Unfortunately what was delivered provided little by way of a reiteration of a message of hope or an assurance that waiting a year on the US to get its act together was a good idea. In fact, the take home from the session suggested an opposite conclusion.

For starters, Kerry, Lugar, and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) (also on the program) weren’t there. This was due to an unfortunate miscommunication between the conference secretariat and the event’s sponsors...

Another conference secretariat mishap? Can this be, or is the reporting just confused between Bali and Poznan? Drama continues as congressional aides dash most hopes:

Even after Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense opened the session with a moving plea for how the US could still make progress in Copenhagen and move forward, especially with this president in the White House, the gathered congressional staffers were having none of it. Each presentation offered more and more minutiae of the difficulties of how a bill becomes a law, culminating in Sen. Lugar’s aide Mark Helmke lecturing the audience on how the American Senate gives undue power to small states, thus offering the chance for tiny parts of the electorate dependent on the coal mining industry to thwart the millions of Californians yearning for an even closer relationship to the sun. [what???]

Light ends his report as follows:

Whatever one thinks about these difficulties the overwhelming impression of the audience leaving this session was clear: We [U.S.] weren’t the change they’ve been waiting for.

Scientists may sue Gore over "Warming & Change" Fraud

Al Gore at U.N. Climate Conference, December 12, 2008, Poznan, Poland

Photo Credit: Reuters 

Fox News' Redeye, hosted by Gregg Gutfeld, interviewed John Coleman, the weather channel founder, about global warming and climate change, and the extremes of the global warming fraud. Coleman makes it clear that he is "green," - is definitely an environmentalist, but that the hysteria over CO2 emissions is unfounded and inaccurately documented.

So, what's the lawsuit all about? Coleman says that 30,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhD's, have attempted to get a debate going with the advocates of global warming but the reply is always: "the debate is over."

According to Coleman, Fox News is the only channel to give the "other side" of the warming issue an interview. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC - all refuse to allow Coleman and others with a viewpoint differing from Al Gore, airtime. Readers: doesn't this infuriate you? It does me. Coleman says that since he cannot be heard anywhere else, maybe he can heard in a court of law. Here's the video, thanks to Ft. Hard Knox, and author, Orlando.

More summary below the video.

Thanks to Live Leak Gutfeld asked how this non-issue became so lauded by so many. Coleman replied (paraphrasing) that Gore took a college course, got interested, became a U.S. Vice-President, the United Nations picked up on it, the media jumped on on-board, formed an advocacy group touted as "experts," and here we are.

I will add that along the way, Gore realized that he could make a lot of money off of a supposed global warming scheme, formed a corporation, conjured up the sale of carbon credits, sells the carbon credits through his corporation and begins a new globe-trotting career. Meanwhile, SENATOR JOHN KERRY believes that President Obama can skirt the U.S. Senate and join a U.N. pact, nevermind the lack of Senate legislation (Senator Inhofe - are you listening?):

It will be like the difference between night and day," Kerry, of Massachusetts, said of Obama's enthusiasm for action against climate change after what he said were eight years of inaction under President George W. Bush. He told Reuters support in the United States for climate action was strong enough to let Obama sign up for emissions cuts under a U.N. pact to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 even if the Senate had not by then agreed matching U.S. climate laws.

Senator Kerry has avoided telling us that a U.N. tax is on the way for America. See: Defeat Obama's U.N. Global Poverty Act. Will one of the first acts of President Obama be to negate our Congressional lawmaking and sign-on to a United Nations treaty?

I mentioned above that the Coleman video was courtesy of Ft. Hard Knox. Visit them for hard-hitting news and their Web 2.0 forum. Featured now on Web 2.0: Twitter, Twitter Everywhere and Cool Tools to Save Time in Social Networking by Jenn Sierra Related: The Fight for Human-made Global Warming