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The Enemy Within: Islamic Jihadists Controlling U.S. Anti-Terrorism

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PJTV’s Bill Whittle has posted a very disturbing look at how U.S. counter-terrorism efforts are being controlled by the Islamic jihadists.  Sources within the intelligence community have stepped forward to present some of the details about the liberal progressive politically-correct mindset that is driving an operational model that directly endangers America.

You can watch the interview here (you may have to register first) but I find the information contained in it so unsettling and important that I took the time to transcribe the interview.  Key points have been highlighted.

BILL WHITTLE:  Hi, I’m Bill Whittle from PJTV and I’m standing in front of what is very likely the most photographed structure on the face of the earth.  Inside the White House sits the President of the United States of America; the most powerful man in the world.  The President bears enormous responsibilities, and primary among them is to defend the citizens of the United States of America.  We’re here in Washington today to speak to a Department of Defense analyst and counter-terrorism official who, requesting anonymity, has made some very remarkable charges.  Charges that both the political and the military structure of the highest levels of our government are infiltrated by the very agents of the enemy against which we find ourselves fighting today.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, you were given an assignment from the Joint Chiefs, essentially from the upper levels of the Pentagon, to understand what the Islamic jihadi enemy’s ideology and operational methods might be.  Is that a fair statement?

DoD Analyst:  Yes.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  What did you discover?

DOD ANALYST:  Well, I was expecting to find that, well, there was some basis to the jihadi arguments that their jihadist warfare, that there were competing arguments and that we could leverage these competing arguments but because they were claiming Islamic laws as basis for their actions we had to start there.  And over a long period of time I ended up collecting a large body of Islamic law, an enormous amount of it available in English, and realized that if Islamic law is the criteria by which you measure legitimacy or illegitimacy you can’t show that the moderates have a doctrinal basis for the position they hold, and you can’t show that on the statement of the law the radicals are wrong. 

I was expecting to find competing views that had some merit. I was expecting to find that the moderate view would be the dominant view, and we’d have to figure out how to make these arguments so that people in the Middle East would know what it was, and could not find it.

Now, I could find that you’re not allowed to fight a jihad you can’t win, and that’s a limiting factor, but when you get to actually what published Islamic law says, it supports the radicals and what they say.  And you come to find, after you kind of get a sense for the language of jihad, and the language of how Islamic law works, that it’s pervasive, even in the U.S. Muslim community.

BILL WHITTLE:   So you got out, you do this research that you were tasked to do by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense; you come back and you say to them, “It’s the radicals that appear to have the doctrinal basis, not the moderates.”

DOD ANALYST:  That’s correct.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  Well, presumably, this would be an interesting piece of information for our Defense department to have.  What were the consequences of you coming back with this information?

DOD ANALYST:  Shock. Because what my experience brought me to was the complete unresponsiveness to facts that as a practical matter they experience every day.  I think that gives way, on a different level, to one that basically has had me believing or holding that if you have no profession…if you have no factual basis to hold a position, you have no professional basis to support it.  If you’re professionals, then you have a duty to be competent; that includes the duty to know.  And if you are national security analysts who are professionals, you’re in violation of your oath to be competent, you’re in violation of your oath to protect and defend.  It just seems they picked up our whole national security apparatus and moved it from a factual legal basis to one that supports the narratives.  But it just struck me that when you hit a certain level, and I don’t want to sound too cynical, but at the same time it seemed where the point at which your future promotion was dependent upon toeing a party line as…let me rephrase that; toeing a narrative as opposed to orienting on facts, or I witnessed a complete shutdown.  A friend of mine used to call my brief, “the redco brief” or the “guilty knowledge brief”, meaning you see this brief that clearly lays out facts that must be accounted for, and at a certain point they just stopped coming.

BILL WHITTLE:   So when officials started telling you, “Hey, we’re not interested in this; we just really don’t care to hear this,” I mean, how pervasive was this attitude?  Was it large numbers of people or one or two key individuals?  I mean, just exactly what are we looking at?

DOD ANALYST:  I can’t give you names and numbers; I have to say, in fairness, there are scores of senior people who got it and were supportive, but it seems that the organizational emphasis, the institutional emphasis, was in the other direction.  And so you would get it in terms of people who would come up and tell you, “We really support you but we can only go so far.”  You know, I supported some missions where the people who I supported made it very clear to me that using the information I used really brought success in a stunning way.  And for a while there I thought that just the sheer force of those successful things would cause some people to do a double look.  It didn’t happen.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, immediately after we concluded that interview here in the Mayflower Hotel, a second whistleblower came forward.  We received a phone call from another gentleman who’s also extremely concerned about the infiltration of radical Islam into law enforcement and defense.  Let’s go upstairs now and listen to parts of our interview with a former special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok, can you start by giving me a quick thumbnail of your professional experience?

FORMER FBI AGENT: I spent nearly 15 years working in the government with a primary expertise on the Islamic movement in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamic doctrine.

BILL WHITTLE:   And which department did you work for?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  The FBI.

BILL WHITTLE:   So you were a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Yes.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  You assert that we’re getting many of our cues on how to react to this terrorist threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, that essentially we’re letting our enemy tell us how to fight them.  Now, I think this is a critical point that we really need to make clear:  is this speculation on your part?  Or is this credible, factual information that you’ve been able to obtain as a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  It’s all factual information and it’s open to the public to digest if they so desire.  These documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial are available online.  All you need to do is Google “Holy Land Foundation”.  The documents also show that every major Muslim organization in the United States is a Muslim Brotherhood front, specifically the most prominent organizations.  The two most prominent organizations in the United States, or three most prominent, are the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America).  CAIR is a Hamas entity; it is Hamas; and ISA is a huge financial entity for Hamas in the United States.  And CAIR and ISNA are the two groups that the U.S. government, including the FBI, DoD, state department, DHS, look to and utilize to do their outreach with the Muslim community in America.

BILL WHITTLE:   Can you tell us how these radical Islamic organizations interface directly with the federal government, in terms of the Defense Department, in terms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement?  How exactly do these radical Muslim groups use their connections to suppress the defenses of the United States against these type of activities?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  That’s a great question.  At the national level, or the FBI and DHS, they actually are invited in by general council’s office of the FBI and DHS to sit in on brainstorming about investigative techniques that FBI agents are using in the field….

BILL WHITTLE:   I have to stop you because, frankly, that sounds so absurd that I have to really make sure I’m understanding you correctly.  Are you saying that the radicalized Muslim groups are invited in to learn our investigative techniques?  That they are invited in to get their feedback on how we’re going to fight against them?  Is that…is that what I understood you to say?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Yes.  So for instance, in the FBI, the general council of the FBI, Valerie Caproni, invited these Muslim organizations, as well as the ACLU and other groups, in to make sure the investigative techniques and the attorney general guidelines and the way the FBI was going to implement the attorney general guidelines was ok and not offensive to these organizations.  As an investigator, and certainly speaking for many others that I know, that is…ummm…that’s nothing short of outrageous.  If you can imagine any group, whether it’s the Costa Nostra or the mafia or any kind of organized crime syndicate, certainly the Muslim Brotherhood could loosely fall under that category, certainly it’s much, much more significant than the mafia was, but to invite them in to make sure that our investigative techniques aren’t offensive to John Gotti; I mean, it’s absurd on the face of it but that’s exactly what we’re doing.

BILL WHITTLE:   Sure. Because you’re revealing in great detail exactly what your investigative and interrogation techniques are, right?  I mean, in a meeting like that you’re giving away the farm, essentially, in terms of how you’re going to be operating in order to make sure that their feelings don’t get hurt.  And then you’re essentially giving the enemy all of the details about how you plan to operate against them, right?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Certainly a significant strategic look a how we’re doing things,yes; as well as some specific techniques.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, you’d mentioned earlier that there’s no training; that people ranging from upper-level administrators in the FBI down to some local sheriff’s deputy in some county out in the middle of Arizona, some place local, local law enforcement; you mentioned that there’s no training for these people whatsoever in terms of the real nature of the threat.  Why is that?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Well, again, I think there are a lot of pieces to that but number one is when the people advising the assistant directors, the special agents in charge in the FBI, the assistant secretaries, and the Department of Homeland Security, etc., when those are Muslim Brothers you’re not going to get training that discusses Islamic doctrine and who the Muslim Brotherhood is, their history and their influence, and their penetration operations here in the United States.  And, to boot, the people who ARE training the FBI are groups like CAIR, which is a Hamas entity and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing throughout the history of the United States.

BILL WHITTLE:   Now I have to stop you again because this is virtually impossible for me to process.  You’re saying that the training that our counter-terrorism forces get is determined by radical Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  No, I’m not saying it’s determined.  It’s given by them.  They have been in our FBI field offices, they’ve been in our FBI headquarters teaching and training our agents and our employees.

BILL WHITTLE:   Is this not too dissimilar to saying that the people who were determining the landing zones for  the D-Day invasion of Germany were Nazi S.S. officials giving out information on gunner placements, and where the best places to come ashore are; is it too far-fetched to say that? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  It’s not about analogy.

BILL WHITTLE:   And then when the plans are finalized and all of the operational details are locked and sealed up in a little envelope, and then it’s handed over to the Gestapo and hopefully they won’t do anything mean with the information.

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Right.

BILL WHITTLE:   I think that as an average American citizen listening to this information, my first response would be, “How on God’s green earth did this happen?  How did this get this far?”

FORMER FBI AGENT:  This has happened because the Muslim Brotherhood has a long-term strategy; they are well-organized with hundreds of front groups that support their public relations, their research arms, they’ve insinuated themselves into our largest universities, they have Muslim student’s associations, which is the first Muslim Brotherhood group that formed in the United States in 1963.  MSA is on every major college campus in the United States, recruiting people to the Brotherhood in our own campuses.

BILL WHITTLE:   So even something as innocuous as a Muslim student association at any American university campus, you can categorically connect those campus groups to the most virulent, radical, anti-American organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  I can say that that’s 100% legally and factually true. The evidence entered into the Holy Land Foundation trial demonstrated the Muslim Students Association was the first Muslim Brotherhood entity in the United States formed in 1963 for the sole purpose of being and establishing the Muslim Brotherhood here, and it continues today to be a Muslim Brotherhood entity that has expanded and recruits students on campuses in the United States.

I did a Google search and the NEA Foundation site has a good compilation of court documents, etc.  for the Holy Land Foundation trials. 

I will let Clare Lopez, Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies have the final word:

To be sure, enemy influence within the Intelligence Community didn’t begin in 2009. In fact, the blueprint for the Muslim Brotherhood information warfare operation against the West goes back to a 1981 MB document called “The Project” that was discovered in a raid in Switzerland. More recently, the FBI discovered the MB’s 1991 U.S. Manifesto in a 2004 raid, a manifesto that not only confirmed the existence of the Brotherhood in the U.S., but outlined its organizational structure and agenda in this country.

The dozens of groups listed as associates in that document include a number who’ve succeeded in forging close relationships inside the structures of U.S. national security. One of them is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, another unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial). The FBI itself has maintained a longstanding liaison relationship with ISNA officials and placed ads in its monthly publication seeking Muslim applicants to become agents. A top FBI lawyer named Valerie Caproni joined senior ISNA official Louay Safi on a 2008 panel discussion at Yale University for a discussion entitled “Behind the Blindfold of Justice: Security, Individual Rights, & Minority Communities After 9/11.” Worse yet, in the wake of the horrific November 2009 military jihad assault at Ft. Hood that took fourteen lives and left dozens injured, it was revealed that Louay Safi was at Ft. Hood providing seminar presentations about Islam to U.S. troops about to deploy to Afghanistan. That’s an amazing record of successful penetration. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.     

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Until and unless the United States proves capable of appointing and electing officials to the top ranks of our national security leadership who both understand and reject the influence of Islamic jihad groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, our country will be incapable of effective defense against either kinetic or stealth jihad attack. We can do better than this…..much better.

The Dems Are Faking Suicide

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The Democrat-controlled Congress is busy planning how to ram their visions of health care “reform” down America’s throat and the rising backlash against their tactics and, indeed, against their progressive liberal ideology is becoming more and more severe.

So severe, that true to the form of all yellow-bellied selfish cowards, Democrats are turning tail and dropping out of 2010 elections left and right.  And the pious spinning begins.  Among the louder dropouts is the infamous sleazeball Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn).  Perhaps to spend some time licking his wounds at his Countrywide sweetheart-deal-bought cottage in Ireland? 

 
Yeah, right.  He seems to forget our flying pigs are waiting patiently in the wings.
 
The real reason that Dodd, Dorgan (ND), Kaufman (DE), and Burris (IL), along with Colorado Governor Bill Ritter are leading the rat charge off the sinking ship is because in the larger progressive liberal Democrat scheme of things, they’re expendable.
 
How can they be expendable when the Democrats need their 60-vote majority in the Senate?  Let us count the ways.  The first answer is contained in three little words:  “universal voter registration”.
 
Simply put, this is a tactic planned by the Democrats that will force – by federal mandate – the states to register everyone to vote. 
In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. …  It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: “take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be …” 
 
The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many states’ lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain drivers licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home, there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates; and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability, all of these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected. Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons, and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers.
 
The second answer is that odious little poster child for all things fraudulent and illegal:  ACORN.  Under investigation in numerous states for their 2008 “assistance” to the Obama campaign, when something as precious as a 60-seat Democrat Senate majority hangs in the balance, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of false voters registered and as many fraudulent ballots cast.  Politico nicely outlined the ACORN problem last year:

Larry Lomax, the chief elections officer in Las Vegas, responded that the group’s claims it had extensive quality controls to catch fraudulent registrations were “pathetic.” He noted that ACORN had hired 59 inmates from a work-release program at a nearby prison and that some inmates who had been convicted of identity theft had been made supervisors. That led some local wags to joke that at least ACORN was hiring specialists to do their work.

ACORN’s second line of defense has been that fraudulent registrations can’t turn into fraudulent votes, as if the felony of polluting voter lists was somehow not all that serious. But that defense goes only a short distance. “How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?” says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state’s photo identification law. “It’s almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there’s no way to trace it.”

Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. “It’s ludicrous to say that fake registrations can’t become fraudulent votes,” she told me. “I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots.”

…some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials. Nate Toller, who worked on ACORN registration drives and headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, agrees. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” he told me.

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Perhaps the clearest look at how fraudulent registrations can be converted into votes comes from Wisconsin. Earlier this year, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Special Investigation Unit released a stunning 67-page report detailing an “illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome” of the 2004 presidential election. 

 It noted many documented cases of staffers for a presidential campaign and an allied 527 group who illegally voted. Those involved in the scheme “represent multiple levels of both the organizations, from upper management to the street level canvassers.” The task force report found many ineligible voters had cast ballots, ineligible felons not only had voted but also worked at the polls, transient college students had cast illegal votes along with day-trippers from nearby Chicago, and homeless voters may well have voted more than once.

 The Milwaukee police report explained just how easy it is to cast an illegal vote without ever being detected., “Michael A. Smith can become Mike Smith, M.A. Smith, or Mickey Smith, depending on the person reviewing the Same Day registration card, and unless a specific allegation is made against one of those name variants, the new name would just be added to the overall database. Even if the new system were capable of discerning the differences in recorded names, the finding would not be discovered until after any multiple ballots had been cast and recorded.” Indeed, the task force found that 1,100 registration cards filled in by voters were declared invalid or untraceable by election officials.

 Another way that fraudulent registrations can be converted into illegal votes is when groups like ACORN either purposely or recklessly sign up visitors from out-of-state or felons who are ineligible to vote. The New York Daily News reported in August, 2004 on how some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, what it called a “shocking finding” because it “found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine,” and noted that “efforts to prevent people from registering in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system.”

For answer number three, we can’t forget granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.  Aka giving criminals given an easy path to citizenship.  While it has been reported that House members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have threatened to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t allow illegal (criminal) immigrants access, word is slipping out that they’ll back down if they get an agreement from Obama that health care coverage for criminals who “earn” a path to citizenship will be addressed in an immigration bill.  A bill rumored to be already in the planning stages.  Then beholden to their savior, the Democrats are counting on their votes.

But there is a small sliver of hope.  Business Week reports that America’s “misery index” (the sum of a country’s unemployment and inflation rates)  has reached 11.8% and there is no reason to think it will not continue to move higher over the next year.  This is its highest point since May 1991, and more than 3 percentage points higher than its average since then.  It topped out at 22% in 1980 – helping to usher in the Reagan era.

It can be another case where misery loves company.  In this case, the company can be found at the polls.  And in such numbers the Democrats’ attempts to steal any election will be so blatant they are put away for good.

Dems Scheming To Screw MA Senate Voters If Brown Wins

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They are hell-bent to pass some version of health care “reform” before His Transparency holds his State of Union address on some as-yet-scheduled date.  So while reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of legislation is hurriedly being negotiated by Democrats behind closed and locked doors, other Democrats in Massachusetts are tipping their hand about their plans to do anything to insure passage of whatever form of slavery ends up being thrown onto the House and Senate floors for a vote.

Their weapon of choice?  The special election on January 19th to replace good old boy, Ded Ted.

Big special elections like that coming up in Massachusetts take time to be certified and it is that very process the Democrats are now trying to figure out how to twist so that the current, hand-picked Senator, Paul Kirk, can remain in office long enough to vote “yes” with his pork-filled cohorts.

Some key snippets from the article in today’s Boston Globe:

The longtime aide and confidant of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who was handpicked by Gov. Deval Patrick after a controversial legal change to hold Kennedy’s seat, vowed to vote for the bill even if Republican state Senator Scott Brown, who opposes the health-care reform legislation, prevails in a Jan. 19 special election.

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The U.S. Senate ultimately will schedule the swearing-in of Kirk’s successor, but not until the state certifies the election.

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“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 – well after the president’s address.

Since the U.S. Senate doesn’t meet again in formal session until Jan. 20, Bay State voters will have made their decision before a vote on health-care reform could be held.  But Kirk and Galvin’s office said today a victorious Brown would be left in limbo.

In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan.  In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Like with Tsongas’ election, this is yet another example showing how progressive, liberal Democrats will do anything to insure their nefarious plans have a snowball’s chance in their version of hell for America.  And it is another reason for every American with a modicum of common sense to send a patriotic $9.12 to Scott Brown’s campaign and for those who live in Massachetts to get out on January 19th and cast their ballot for him.

Only a clearly enormous majority win by Brown can force the Democrat’s to lift their dirty skirt and cause the proper backlash that can kill their plans for not only their version of government-run health “care”, but all their other tax- and deficit-raising atrocities.

Spread the word, Patriots.

You’re Too Stupid To Plan For Your Own Retirement

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Hidden in the wolf’s guise of compassionate concern, the Obamanation is now looking at how they can get their hands on your retirement savings.  It is their affirmatively-graduated Ivy League opinion that we, the great unwashed masses, simply aren’t saving enough money to carry us through our retirements so the wishlist for the Secretary of Labor includes taking a look at how to regulate (read:  force) retirees to convert portions of their 401k plans into annuities.

Here is the actual text:

Department of Labor (DOL)
Employee Benefits Security Administration ( EBSA ) RIN: 1210-AB33

Priority:  Other Significant
Agenda Stage of Rulemaking:  PreRule
Major:  Undetermined
Unfunded Mandates:  Undetermined
CFR Citation:  Not Yet Determined (To search for a specific CFR, visit the Code of Federal Regulations  http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/retrieve.html)
Legal Authority:  29 USC 1135; ERISA sec 505
Legal Deadline:  None

Title:  Lifetime Income Options for Participants and Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans
Abstract:  This initiative will explore what steps, if any, that the Department could or should take, by regulation or otherwise, to enhance the retirement security of American workers by facilitating access to and use of lifetime income or income arrangements designed to provide a stream of income after retirement.

Regulatory Plan:
Statement of Need:  With a continuing trend away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, employees are not only increasingly responsible for the adequacy of their retirement savings, but also for ensuring that their savings last throughout their retirement.  Employees may benefit from access to and use of lifetime income or other arrangements that will reduce the risk of running out of funds during the retirement years.  However, both access to and use of such arrangements in defined contribution plans is limited. The Department, taking into consideration recommendations of the ERISA Advisory Council and others, intends to explore what steps, if any, it could or should take, by regulation or otherwise, to enhance the retirement security of workers by increasing access to and use of such arrangements.

Let’s get this into perspective, shall we?  The Fed, led by tax-cheat “Turbo-Tax Timmy” Geithner, rather deliberately crashed the market, causing retirees (and everyone else) to lose significant chunks of their investment portfolios, and now they want to help by possibly forcing Americans to buy from Wall Street investment firms bailed out by our hard-earned tax dollars because WE are the stupid ones?

Cue those frantically flying pigs.  From Business Week:

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

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“There’s a real desire on a lot of people’s parts to try to encourage something other than just rolling over a lump sum, to make sure this money will actually last a lifetime,” said [David] Certner, legislative counsel for Washington-based AARP, the biggest U.S. advocacy group for retirees.

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There is “a tremendous amount of interest in the White House” in retirement-security initiatives, Borzi, who heads the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, said in an interview.

In addition to annuities, the inquiry will cover other approaches to guaranteeing income, including longevity insurance that would provide an income stream for retirees living beyond a certain age, she said.

“There’s been a fair amount of discussion in the literature taking the view that perhaps there ought to be more lifetime income,” Iwry, a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said in an interview.

“The question is how to encourage it, and whether the government can and should be helpful in that regard,” Iwry said.

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Promoting annuities may benefit companies that provide them through employers, including ING Groep NV (INGA:NA) and Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU), or sell them directly to individuals, such as American International Group Inc. (AIG), the insurer that has received $182.3 billion in government aid.

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One proposal raised by Iwry as co-author of a paper while at the Retirement Security Project, before joining the administration, has reached Congress. A bill requiring employers to report 401(k) savings both as an account balance and as a stream of income based on an annuity was introduced on Dec. 3 by Senators Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, and Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat.

What Americans choose to do with their money is nobody’s business but their own.  Certainly people should be encouraged to save for their retirement but when those who do so have their money stolen by the government through alleged regulation and oversight, the answer is not more government regulation and oversight.  Social Security was intended to be an adjunct to our personal retirement savings, not the end-all into which it has morphed (mainly through the progressive liberal-encouraged spread of entitlement mentality derangement syndrome), and the government’s management of it has never been as originally intended so despite being a Ponzi scheme in the first place, it’s broke.  The AARP benefits from the sale of insurance policies so their support must be seen as self-serving and therefore suspect. 

Bottom line:  To give the government any more control is just another step towards the nanny-state they so desperately desire.

Dems Planning Next Hidden Tax Increase

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We all know that our federal witholding has been increased this year, thanks to Obama’s “no new taxes” promises.  But now Congress is looking to raid your pocketbook even more, again without having to actually pass legislation to do so.

Today’s Wall Street Journal talks about this latest Democratic fundraiser.

We’re guessing that when Americans think of outlaw industries, tax preparers aren’t the first rogues that come to mind. But lo, the nation’s green eyeshades are now destined to come under the regulatory rule of the Internal Revenue Service as part of the Obama Administration’s latest revenue grab.

Under the plan, which would begin with the 2011 tax season, anyone who takes money to help people with their taxes will have to register with the IRS, and eventually pass competency tests and sign up for continuing education. So having made tax filing so complicated that most Americans need help with their forms, Washington now wants to raise the price of such counsel by regulating advisers in a way that may reduce their supply.

While the progressive liberals favorite slur is to claim profitable private enterprise are evil “corporate oligarchies”, they are only too glad to hop into bed with them when it suits their purposes of ursurping the Rights of American citizens.  The excuse being bantied about this time is that undocumented IRS claim of $290 billion/year in alleged “unreported income”.

Cheering the new regulations are big tax preparers like H&R Block, who are only too happy to see the feds swoop in to put their mom-and-pop seasonal competitors out of business. Kathryn Fulton, senior vice president for government relations, told the Washington Post the company was glad to support rules that meant H&R Block “won’t be competing against people who aren’t regulated and don’t have the same standards as we do.” With fewer tax preparers in the market, H&R Block will find it easier to raise prices.

It might also live to regret that. The new IRS blueprint is already in play in California, whose rules for regulating tax preparers seem to have inspired Commissioner Shulman, including his new education and registration requirements. To get taxpayers away from preparers and off-the-shelf software, the state is pushing programs like CalFile, which allows voters to file returns through a state run electronic program. Under the ReadyReturn program, the state will even scour your W-2 for the year and send you a return for your signature already filled out. The eventual goal seems to be to have the government do everybody’s state tax return, like the French do.

The feds are now getting in on this act, with Montana Democrat Max Baucus and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley supporting a free e-file portal at the IRS Web site that would compete directly with private tax preparation software. In March, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Ways and Means Committee hearing that he’d also like the IRS to begin sending taxpayers pre-completed returns.

We can certainly understand why Mr. Geithner wants government to do his returns, but please spare the rest of us. By insourcing tax preparation to the government, the IRS would shift the burden of objecting to any error onto the taxpayer instead of the IRS. That would change the dynamics of U.S. tax compliance, trending away from a voluntary system in which taxpayers are expected to be honest about declaring income and deductions—subject to audit. Instead, the feds would apply their standards, and a taxpayer would have to appeal for an exception to the same efficient folks at the IRS you can’t get on the phone at tax time.

This is yet another reason to tell the progressive liberals to K.I.S.S. it and flush Washington’s “baffle ’em with bullshit”.   It’s long past the time for at least a modicum of common sense.   Like simply streamlining the tax code.

This Administration Means Business!

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Yessiree, Bob.  You’d better not go messing around with these guys.  The LA Times notes today that:

“…the State Department has announced it is revoking the U.S. visa for suspected Nigerian underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.”

Yes, you read that correctly.  Twelve whole days after trying unsuccessfully to blow his nuts off and take down a Christmas Day U.S. flight before Numbnuts Abdulmutallab no longer has a U.S. visa.  Instead, he’s got a room to himself, 3 squares a day, and visits from his rich daddy while we’re paying for a shady lawyer to defend him against charges of:

  1. Attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction
  2. Attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
  3. Willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
  4. Willfully placing a destructive device in, upon and in proximity to an aircraft within the special airdraft jurisdiction of the United States, which was likely to endanger the safety of such aircraft
  5. Possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence
  6. Possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence

(Yes, I know that #5 and #6 read exactly same.  The details of them do, too.  No idea why except thst maybe the administration wants to make it really, really clear they’re really, really serious about the first four counts that are the details contained in #5 and #6.)

I’m sure that this has all sent shivers of fear up and down the spines of Islamic jihadists everywhere.

About That Massachusetts Senate Race

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It’s no secret that here at the Smoke Break, politicians must do a great deal to earn our trust.  And that because it has become a given that the definition of sleazebag has a picture of a Democrat next to it, they have an even deeper hole from which they must dig themselves.  A story posted in today’s Boston Globe is a perfect example.

In October 2005, a Somerville police officer living in Melrose raped his 23-month-old niece with a hot object, most likely a curling iron.

Keith Winfield, then 31, told police he was alone with the toddler that day and made additional statements that would ultimately be used to convict him.

But in the aftermath of the crime, a Middlesex County grand jury overseen by Martha Coakley, then the district attorney, investigated without taking action.

It was only after the toddler’s mother filed applications for criminal complaints that Coakley won grand jury indictments charging rape and assault and battery.

Even then, nearly 10 months after the crime, Coakley’s office recommended that Winfield be released on personal recognizance, with no cash bail. He remained free until December 2007, when Coakley’s successor as district attorney won a conviction and two life terms.

The story goes on to say that:

Coakley’s prosecutors made the recommendation that Winfield be released with no cash bail, even though an investigator with the Department of Children and Families, working in the weeks immediately following the rape, found that Winfield had been suspended from his job with the Somerville police for disciplinary reasons and had lied about it.

In addition, the investigator found that Winfield had concealed the fact that he had been evaluated at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital for stress less than two weeks before the rape.

Indeed, before Winfield’s trial, prosecutors sought to admit evidence that Winfield, in the days leading up to the rape, was treated for a substance abuse problem and had threatened to kill himself by holding a gun to his head, “evincing great emotional stress and the strong possibility that [he] would harm himself or others.’’

 And that baby? 

The toddler ultimately spent a month at Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston recovering from burns.

Now Martha Coakley wants to be a United States Senator representing the state of Massachusetts.  With this kind of horrific irresponsibility in her track record, it’s clear she has long surpassed her level of incompetance.  If the people of Massachusetts have a lick of sense, they will give her the boot.

Increased 2010 Payroll Taxes Hit Even More Americans

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“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.
Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
(Barack Obama)

Firm as Jello, eh?  In an unreported demonstration of Chicago-style fiscal responsibility, everyone who must have federal taxes withheld from their paychecks will see an increase in the amount taken out, and with a lowering of the threshold, millions more poor Americans will now be paying federal taxes, too.  These are only some examples from the new witholding tables:

1.) Congress has lowered the threshold to capture more wages that qualify to owe taxes–across the board. For example, in 2009 the withholding tax threshold began at weekly single wage levels of $138. In 2010, that same wage is lowered to $116. In short, instead of the taxable wage starting at $138, it is now down to $116–which changes the income threshold and taxes even poorer Americans.

For married couples, the change in the weekly base taxable wage changes from $303 in 2009 down to $264 in 2010. These lower wage thresholds can be seen throughout the new withholding charts for weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, and annual, as well as daily and miscellaneous pay periods.

This across-the-board reduction in the initial wage threshold increases the number of wage earners who would have to pay taxes.

2.) Instead of seven (7) wage categories, there are now nine (9) wage categories. The new structure allows for direct taxation on the middle class with these wages broken out into smaller categories. The direct hit on the middle class withholding taxes can be seen on all of the new tables. Additionally, the IRS could not explain these changes.

Let’s look at the actual numbers for one category and compare them from 2009 to 2010:

2009 Biweekly, Single, Payroll Period, after subtracting withholding allowances

Not over $276: $0 in taxes
Over $276 – $400: 10% payroll tax
Over $400 – $1,392: $12.40 plus 15% of excess over $400
Over $1,392 – $2,559: $161.20 plus 25% of excess over $1,392
Over $2,559 – $6,677: $452.95 plus 28% of excess over $2,559 (Notice the large salary range)
Over $6,677 – $14,423: $1,605.99 plus 33% of excess over $6,677
$14,423: pays $4,162.17 plus 35% of excess over $14,423

Let’s look at the new numbers for 2010:

2010 Biweekly, Single, Payroll Period, after subtracting withholding allowances

Not over $233: $0 in taxes
Over $233 – $401: 10% payroll tax
Over $401 – $1,387: $16.80 plus 15% of excess over $401
Over $1,387 – $2,604: $164.70 plus 25% of excess over $1,387
Over $2,604 – $3,248: $468.95 plus 27% of excess over $2,604 (Notice the large salary range is gone)
Over $3,248 – $3,373: $642.83 plus 30% of excess over $3,248 (Notice the substantial increase and 30% tax rate on these wages)
Over $3,373 – $6,688: $680.33 plus 28% of excess over $3,373
$14,450: pays $4,169.99 plus 35% of excess over $14,450

These patterns of additional withholding can be seen throughout the new charts for the 2010 tax year for single and married persons. It appears that everyone earning a paycheck is affected, not just retired military; social security payments will remain the same.

 In the immortal words of Joe Wilson, “YOU LIE!”

Quote Of The Day

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The new health care plan will be written by a committee whose Chairman says he doesn’t understand it,

passed by a Congress which hasn’t read it,

signed by a President who smokes,

funded by a Treasury Chief who did not pay his taxes,

overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese,

and financed by a country that is broke.

 

What could  possibly go  wrong?

Harry The Hypocrite

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Harry does another Washington show-and-tell about how to win friends and influence people and properly represent your constituents.  This one is titled:  It’s only wrong when someone else does it.

“Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments?

“Now, these amendments were not put in in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in. Sometimes Democrats complain and sometimes Republicans complain — whoever is in the minority here. Well, we didn’t get enough consultation; you cut us out of the process. But at least you had a group of Democrats and Republicans in the process. Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it. How could anyone say: ‘OK’? You have taken care of me, but I don’t want to see the other 40 amendments — -because with this legislation, similar to all legislation, you put something in one spot, and you have to take something out someplace else.”

(Senator Harry Reid, 2/9/06)

 

 

Flash forward to October 2009:

But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington:  Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and  Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and  Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as by members of President Obama’s health-care team, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

…after weeks of Senate Finance Committee public hearings, the Senate negotiations are now an invitation-only affair in Reid’s office. The majority leader is unlikely to expand his group, even as some senators unhappy with parts of the legislation, such as  John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), have asked to be in the room.

“Neither I nor any other senator has the luxury of passing a perfect bill — I wish we could — that conforms exactly to his or her beliefs.  But we must act.”
(Harry Reid)

And again in December 2009:

Sen. Dick Durbin’s job as majority whip is to count votes, but don’t ask him for the current tally on the health care bill.

“I don’t know,” Durbin said earlier this week. “Sen. Reid is the one who has been keeping it pretty close.”

Early on in the process — when Reid was still trying to reconcile bills moving through two different Senate committees — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked him about the progress he was making.

Reid pointed both of his index fingers to his head and said: “I got it all figured out how we’re going to do this.” And then he walked away.