Archive for December, 2007

Date: December 17th, 2007, Filed under Mitt Romney

Supposed business leader Mitt Romney may not be the money marvel and budgeting genius that his supporters make him out to me. After reading the LA Times today, it seems that he may have mastered one thing: knowing about government’s tax loopholes, and taking advantage of them. I own corporations myself, and there are many legimate ways to save on taxes. I only use the moral ones, though.

The LA Times article alleges the following:

But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.

Romney has based his White House bid, in part, on the skills he learned as co-founder and chief of Bain Capital, one of the nation’s most successful private equity groups. His campaign cites his record while governor of Massachusetts of closing state tax loopholes; his involvement with foreign tax havens had not previously come to light.

In the Cayman Islands, Romney was listed as a general partner and personally invested in BCIP Associates III Cayman, a private equity fund that is registered at a post office box on Grand Cayman Island and that indirectly buys equity in U.S. companies. The arrangement shields foreign investors from U.S. taxes they would pay for investing in U.S. companies.

So here is a man running for President, a man who campaigns on his supposed policy of closing tax loopholes, and that very man’s business profited from the very same loopholes he threatens to close for us middle class and poor business owners. Lovely. If I was to make a successful business, I wouldn’t do it by utilizing loopholes that would give me an uncompetitive government-sponsored advantage. Tax laws are supposed to be even (yeah, right), but in reality, they’re not. The powerful always have an advantage, so giving them congratulations on making a profitable business is not worthy of your time. Face it: the powerful can make money, and you and I can try, only to have it robbed through taxation and Federal Reserve inflationary policies.

Would you really vote for an individual who flip-flops not only about his moral views, years after he made policy that went against his new views, but also flip-flops on holding himself to the same standard that he will enforce for others who MUST obey the laws that he signs?

This guy has nothing going for him as President, and this issues is just the cherry on the topping of proof as to why. Glad to sling the mud at your, Mitt. We’ll include it on your resume for future offices that we’re hopeful you’ll not win.

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Date: December 17th, 2007, Filed under Mike Huckabee

Slinging the Mud at Mike Huckabee is becoming easier than ordering a value meal at McDonald’s. Every day that passes, there’s new news on more terrible activities in the supposed pastor’s past. Make note not of the words of a Christian, but of their actions. Judge them not, but do remember that politicians that perform deeds contrary to their words do not change. Don’t give Huckabee the reward of Presidency, or even support, if the man has a past like he alledgely does.

Today’s Huckabee mud slinging covers one pardon out of 1000 that he gave, this one over a 4-time drunk driver. From the National Review:

The question is if there was there a connection between his wife Glenda Fields’s five-figure political donations and Huckabee’s action. On April 14, 2004, then-Gov. Huckabee commuted the sentence of Mr. Fields — then a four-time driving-while-intoxicated offender — granting him early release from prison. Fields, a resident of the western Arkansas town of Van Buren, was a habitual offender. He had already been convicted of DWIs in 1996, 1998, and 2000, but his 2001 felony-DWI conviction resulted in the maximum six-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine.

The political contributions by the Fields family — large by Arkansas standards — went unreported at the time Huckabee granted Eugene Fields executive clemency. The size of the donations places the Fields family in the top tier of the state GOP’s donors, alongside Arkansas aristocracy like the scions of the Fords and Stephens families. Both Scott Ford, CEO of Alltel, and Warren Stephens, CEO of Stephens, Inc., gave the Arkansas Republican party $10,000 in 2003.

And this is a man who Christians admire? The enemies of faith know the words to say better than the protectors of it. I’m not surprised that many of my Christian friends admire Huckabee, since he was a pastor and a governor and proclaims God as his main supporter. Of course, I recall that Jesus was offered the role of political leader by the Enemy, and he declined it. I wouldn’t be so fast to proclaim that God supports me when the only Biblical relevancy we have in the New Testament is in a chapter regarding the Enemy.

I surely won’t support Huckabee, and I hope I get to sling new mud at you tomorrow.

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Date: December 17th, 2007, Filed under Mike Huckabee

According to a December 14th, 2007 Politico.com article:

Mike Huckabee accepted more than 90 gifts from 21 Arkansans he appointed to state posts during his decade as governor, a Politico analysis of state public records found.

Since he set his sights on the White House, those supporters, their families and their companies have kept on giving. They contributed nearly $161,000 to a pre-presidential campaign account and Huckabee’s official campaign committee since late last year, according to state and federal campaign finance records.

Gifts are something someone gives with no intention of getting anything back in return. A gift is usually given within family, but it is also common for friends to give gifts for celebratory reasons. Employers give gifts as a thank you for a job well done.

When someone offers an item to a member of government, it is never a gift. If that person receives benefits after the giving of the item of value, it is worse than a gift: it is a bribe.

Mike Huckabee’s record on accepting these items of value, and quickly offering something of greater value in return, is yet another proof that Huckabee is not fit to be President, and not fit to even be a police chief. Abusing the power of office by giving unelected gift-givers that same power should be investigated, and if a crime was committed, the maximum penalty should be dosed out.

Even worse, the same “gift”-givers when Huckabee was Governor are now giving new “gifts” to Huckabee’s Presidential campaign. What will the response be should Huckabee be elected to President?

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Date: December 14th, 2007, Filed under Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney has admitted vocally that he is a supporter of the flawed and harmful No Child Left Behind law.

In an interview, Mitt Romney said:

Sure, quite a few, actually. One is No Child Left Behind. I’ve taken a position where, once upon a time, I said I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. That was my position when I ran for Senate in 1994. That’s very popular with the base. As I’ve been a governor and seen the impact that the federal government can have holding down the interest of the teachers’ unions and instead putting the interests of the kids and the parents and the teachers first, I see that the Department of Education can actually make a difference. So I supported No Child Left Behind. I still do. I know there are a lot in my party that don’t like it, but I like testing in our schools. I think it allows us to get better schools.

Getting the Federal government out of the bureacracy of trying to run local schools has been a key factor in the conservative movement. Federal control of local education has been a pillar of socialism, and has no room in a supposed “conservative” campaign.

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Date: December 14th, 2007, Filed under Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee’s record on home schooling shows that his actions speak much louder than his words. Although he has been endorsed by a supposedly pro-homeschool organization (the Home School Legal Defense Association), their own website shows that Huckabee has promoted and even voted for an Arkansas law that infringes on the rights of homeschooling parents and children:

Home Schoolers Lose Ground with New Law: The enactment of House Bill 1724 on April 5, 1999, gives Arkansas the unique distinction of becoming the first state in the nation to add restrictions to its existing home school law. Sponsored by Representative Jim Magnus (R-55), a home schooling father from Little Rock, the new law, among other things, establishes notification deadlines and imposes a 14-day waiting period before parents are allowed to withdraw their children from public school to begin home schooling mid-semester … Now known as Act 1117, the H.B. 1724 law becomes effective 90 days after it was signed by Governor Huckabee on April 5, 1999. Therefore, it will begin to apply to home schooling families at the beginning of the 1999–2000 school year. The new restrictions placed on home schooling families under Act 1117 are as follows:

(1) Notice of intent must be given no later than August 15 by parents beginning home schooling in the fall semester or by December 15 for those beginning in the spring semester.

(2) Parents deciding to begin home schooling after the start of a semester are permitted to do so by providing the notice of intent 14 days prior to withdrawing the child from public school and each year thereafter at the beginning of the school year. The superintendent or the local school board may waive the 14-day waiting period.

(3) A public school student who is currently under disciplinary action for violation of any school policy is not eligible to begin home schooling unless (a) the superintendent or local school board chooses to allow the student to enroll in a home school, (b) the disciplinary action against the student has been completed or the school semester ends, whichever occurs first, or (c) the student has been expelled from public school.

So while Huckabee campaigns as a supporter of home schooling rights, it is obvious that his words are meaningless compared to his actions in the past. Children are free to change their minds before they do wrong, but adults who change their minds after doing wrong should not be politicians.

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