On Voting Republicans Out Of Office

And Killary says her husband is not a rooting pig. Go figure.

I thought you said a few pages ago, that you believed in market based solutions? You wonder why I question your "Republican" creds? Govt solutions are not free market solutions.

http://www.independentsentinel.com/obamas-old-commie-boss-funds-various-revolutionary-groups-including-ferguson/

Florida police caught using mug shots of black men for target practice
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/family-outraged-after-finding-police-using-mug-shots-target-practice

Poll: Voters Want Pretty Much The Opposite Of What Congress Is Doing
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/16/3612461/poll-voters-want-renewable-energy/

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I never, EVER said that. What I did say was there are certain things that should never, ever be totally privatized: Education and social services. Some things that should never, ever be privatized to any degree: the military and police/prisons. Everything else is pretty much OK with me: trash collection, public utilities, construction etc.

I am a Republican.

So Think Progress does a story on how the GOP is moving in the wrong direction, according to what a poll released by the Center for American Progress said? Yeah. I'm sure those were not bias questions at all...

Just so you know, I also disregard polls done or sponsored by Foxnews, MSNBC and CNN.

Sam Brownback reverses course, proposes new taxes

By Kim Dixon and Brian Faler

1/16/15 3:13 PM EST

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, whose massive tax cuts became a cause célèbre for conservatives but threw his state’s budget into disarray, announced Friday that he would pursue tax increases.

In a stark turnaround, the Republican called for higher taxes on cigarettes and liquor as part of his annual budget while proposing to make future tax cuts contingent on revenue projections.

Brownback’s cuts to a number of state taxes in 2012 failed to boost the economy like he had hoped, triggering a backlash when the huge budget shortfall that resulted forced major decreases in government services. His state’s credit rating was lowered, and Brownback nearly lost his job in the November elections.

Critics of the tax cuts enjoyed a told-you-so moment Friday, calling Brownback’s reversal inevitable.

“We’ve seen this exploding budget gap, and this year, after three years of this experience, the recognition is they have to put a halt on these tax cuts,” said Meg Wiehe, state policy director at the liberal-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Republican presidential hopeful, Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks at the United States Steel Mon Valley Works Irvin Plant. | Getty
Rick Perry's oil hazard

KATIE GLUECK

Brownback, a former senator whose name is sometimes bandied about for a possible presidential run, acknowledged the state’s fragile fiscal situation.

“My budget proposal recognizes that the current budget trajectory is unsustainable and that difficult solutions are required by state law as well as by fiscal prudence,” Brownback said in releasing his two-year budget.

But he said this week that he would stick with his plans to phase out the state’s income tax. “We will continue our march to zero income taxes,” the governor said Thursday in his State of the State address. “States with no income tax consistently grow faster than those with high income taxes.”

Critics have been howling for the past year, after the tax cuts did not deliver the economic growth promised. The shortfall fueled a debate over some conservative claims that tax cuts can pay for themselves.

The latest budget plan includes a major hike in taxes on cigarettes from 79 cents per pack to $2.29 per pack and a jump in a tax on liquor from 8 percent to 12 percent.

The moves may reverberate in Washington, where lawmakers are battling over congressional Republicans’ decision to implement so-called dynamic scoring. The controversial budgeting methodology attempts to take into account the economic effects of cutting taxes.

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax guru influential with conservative lawmakers, said Brownback’s new revenue proposal doesn’t roll back what they believe to be the most important part of what he did several years ago: income tax cuts.

“There has been no compromise on the commitment to phase out the income tax. The Kansas income tax did not receive a pardon from the governor, just a delay in the date of execution,” he said in a statement to POLITICO.

Kansas revenue analysts reported in November that the state would require $278 million in cuts by this June to balance the budget. They said a state reserve fund of about $379 million would be emptied, and lawmakers should cut an additional $435 million to avoid a deficit this year.

By most measures, Brownback’s tax cuts were historic.

He and the GOP legislature slashed personal income tax rates by 25 percent, with the biggest proportional cuts going to the wealthy. They also nixed all taxes for businesses organized as so-called pass-through entities — which can encompass mom-and-pop stores but also big law firms and other businesses that chose to organize that way.

Then came shortfalls, a credit downgrade from Moody’s and a revolt among moderate Kansas Republicans that nearly cost him his job in an unexpectedly tight race last fall.

The 2012 changes decreased tax rates for the highest earners from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent, with the goal of dropping them to 3.9 percent in 2018. Brownback is now proposing to keep the 2015 rates at 4.6 percent and 2.7 percent, depending on income level, and to make further cuts only if revenues exceed the prior year by 103 percent.

His budget would boost general tax revenues from $5.8 billion in fiscal 2015 to $5.97 billion in 2016 and $6.11 billion in 2017. Consumption taxes would rise from zero in 2015 to $108 million and $104 million in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Brian Faler and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

Aetna CEO Asked Execs To Read Piketty, Then Gave His Lowest-Paid Workers A Raise

One CEO has taken a step that could help fend off Thomas Piketty's nightmare vision of rising wealth inequality: He's giving thousands of his workers a raise.

Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini announced on Monday that the health-insurance company will be raising wages for its lowest-paid employees. Starting in April, the minimum hourly base pay for Aetna's American workers will be $16 an hour, according to a company press release.

The 5,700 workers affected by the change will see an average pay raise of about 11 percent. The lowest-paid workers, who currently make $12 an hour, will get a 33-percent raise.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Bertolini recently requested that Aetna executives read Capital In The Twenty-First Century, by the French economist Piketty. The book, which has been hailed as the "most important book of the twenty-first century," warns that the gap between the haves and the have-nots is heading toward Gilded Age levels of inequality and calls on the world's largest economies to fix the problem.

Continued at Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/13/aetna-ceo-piketty-worker-raises_n_6462540.html

This is the way it should be done. A company makes the pay raises, not forced by the govt.

Mitt Romney Has a Huge New Conflict-of-Interest Problem

If he jumps into the 2016 race, will Romney reveal the investors and investments of Solamere Capital, the $700 million private equity firm he runs with his son?

—By David Corn
| Fri Jan. 16, 2015 6:00 AM EST

In 2012, Mitt Romney's career as a businessman who earned many millions of dollars became a net loss, as political foes slammed him for running Bain Capital, a private equity firm that invested in US companies that downsized and shifted jobs overseas and that obtained financial stakes in foreign companies that depended on US outsourcing for profits. At the same time, Romney, who refused to do a full release of his tax returns, was hit with questions (he didn't answer) about mysterious personal investments in offshore accounts. Should he mount a third presidential effort, as he has told GOP funders he is considering, all of these issues are likely to return. But there's another matter that will be be added to the pile of financial controversies for Romney to face: Solamere Capital, the $700 million private equity firm cofounded by his son Taggart that Romney has helped run since March 2013. Who has Romney been investing with, and what has he been investing in? These are questions that Romney 2016 will confront and that, no doubt, the firm will not want to answer.

In March 2013, Mitt Romney became chair of Solamere's executive committee and a member of its investment committee, and Solamere's bare website currently lists him as the executive partner group chairman. The site only describes the company as "a collection of families and influential business leaders leveraging their broad networks and industry expertise to invest strategic capital." But the firm has recruited scores of investors willing to give the Romneys millions, and it has invested in an untold number of other funds and companies. Any of these parties—the investors or the investments—could pose a conflict of interest for a presidential candidate or raise a significant question. Has Solamere invested in companies that outsource? Or in overseas firms that compete with US firms? Has it drawn investments from people or corporations at home or abroad that want to curry favor with a possible president? Might the companies and private equity firms Solamere invests in have an interest in lobbying a future Romney administration? There is no way for the public to know; the firm does not disclose any information on its investors or investments. So how will Romney respond to these and other questions about his work for Solamere?

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Shortly after Romney ended his presidential bid in early 2008, Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, who had been the Romney campaign's financial director, formed Solamere, which was named after a ritzy part of Utah's Deer Valley where the Romney family owned a ski mansion. As the New York Times reported, "Neither had experience in private equity. But what the close friends did have was the Romney name and a Rolodex of deep-pocketed potential investors who had backed Mr. Romney's presidential run." The pair brought in a third partner, Eric Scheuermann, who did have years of private equity experience. In its early days, the firm seemed part of the Romney network. At one point, Solamere shared an address with Romney's political action committee. It solicited investments from the well heeled, generally seeking a minimum of a $10 million buy-in. According to the Times, Mitt and Ann Romney sank a "critical, early" $10 million into their son's venture, signaling that the firm had Mitt's blessing, which Tagg and his crew could use as a selling point as they chased after funding from others.

In 2008, Solamere set out to raise $200 million, and by May 2009 it had attracted $186 million from 39 investors, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records. Tagg Romney, Zwick, and Scheuermann, the records noted, would receive an estimated $16.8 million in management fees in the first six years. The records do not indicate the identities of the 39 investors who kicked in the initial financing. But other public records show that corporate titan Meg Whitman, a longtime friend and political ally of Mitt Romney, invested more than $1 million in Solamere. The University of Utah put about $1 million if its endowment into the firm's fund. H. Lee Scott Jr., the former CEO of Walmart and short-time member of the board of Goldman Sachs, was an early investor, became a partner, and served on Solamere's investment committee. Tagg Romney told the Times that his early investors included a few NASCAR drivers, two NFL quarterbacks, and nine heads of other private equity firms. One of Solamere's initial investments was in a North Carolina financial-services firm operated by former officials of a financial company run by Allen Stanford, who was later convicted of running a massive Ponzi scheme. These officials had come from the Charlotte office of the Stanford Financial Group, which had been closed by the feds for selling phony certificates of deposit.

During the 2012 election, with Zwick helping to run Solamere and simultaneously raising money for Mitt Romney's presidential bid, government ethics advocates questioned the probity of the coziness between Romney's political funders and his fellow Solamere investors. Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution told the Boston Globe that Solamere was an example of how business and political elites operate "in the first-class compartment."

Four months after Romney flamed-out as a presidential candidate, Solamere announced that he would "play a greater role" at the firm, chairing its executive committee and participating on its investment committee. "We believe that Governor Romney's experience and insight in private investing will enhance Solamere's distinctiveness," the firm said in an email to investors.

With Mitt Romney more involved, Solamere expanded. And demand to be in business with Romney was high. The firm, according to Fortune, was seeking about $300 million for a second round of investment. In the email to investors, Solamere noted, "we feel strongly that there is value in not raising too large of a fund, and therefore anticipate keeping the size to a level we feel we can appropriately manage within our desired band of target returns." But in May 2014, Solamere Capital filed reports with the SEC noting it had created two new funds, with 200 investors investing a total of $472 million. (Five months later, Solamere reported these two funds had actually drawn $527 million from 215 investors.) Investor interest had been so intense that the firm had raised its self-imposed limit on the size of the funds to accommodate all the investors who wanted to be in bed with Mitt and Tagg Romney. These new funds would invest in other private equity funds and invest directly in private companies.

Solamere freely mixed politics and business. In June 2013, as it was hunting for investors, the firm sponsored a policy conference convened by Mitt Romney at an exclusive resort in Park City, Utah, which attracted Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and Paul Ryan as speakers. At the same time—and in the same place—Solamere hosted a conference for investors. As the Washington Post reported, "The concentration of wealthy Romney backers in one place is a natural draw for politicians with national ambitions. But, as Solamere investors acknowledged, the gathering also provided them with potential targets, lending the retreat an aura of personal enrichment along with the focus on public policy."

With Mitt Romney now an active participant in Solamere Capital, the implications for his potential presidential campaign are more serious. In the last days of the 2012 campaign, several liberal good-government groups and unions sent a complaint to the US Office of Government Ethics charging that the financial disclosure form Romney had filed as a presidential candidate was not in compliance with federal law because, in part, it did not list Solamere's holdings. On the form, Romney noted his family's investments in several funds, including Solamere's first fund, but he did not reveal what Solamere invested in—meaning the ultimate investment was not disclosed. As the complaint noted, "precisely because private equity firms typically invest heavily in a few select companies…there is a far greater chance that ownership of these funds could lead to a conflict of interest." The Office of Government Ethics did not respond to the complaint, and the matter died.

Romney's Solamere issue will be different this time around. He's not a passive investor. He has helped run the firm and guide its investments for the past two years. He knows where the money is coming from and where it is going. There will be demands for him to reveal who he has been hobnobbing with financially so it can be ascertained if he is burdened by conflicts of interest—or if he has been making money in a manner at odds with his public policy pronouncements. But firms such as Solamere thrive on privacy. Their investment picks are their secret sauce, and many of their investors might prefer being unnamed.

Solamere Capital did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Mitt Romney also did not respond.

In the 2012 campaign, Romney was the candidate who defied transparency. (In one memorable moment, an irritated Ann Romney huffed that she and her husband had disclosed "all you people need to know.") Kevin Madden, a top Romney adviser in 2012, recently noted that the Obama campaign successfully turned Romney's tax return question into a "character issue" that damaged Romney. With Jeb Bush releasing tens of thousands of emails from his time as Florida governor and signaling he will make public at least a decade's worth of tax filings, Romney, should he enter the contest, could run smack into the same challenge. But even if he wants to avoid problems similar to those of the 2012 campaign, can he reveal the inner workings of a private equity firm that was fueled by political capital? Might such revelations hurt his political prospects or harm his son's company? With Solamere, Romney has a new private equity problem.

Never bothered the Clintons, but not much does.

Thats about as stupid as anything you've ever said, asshole. Please for shits and giggles, explain that useless POS opinion. And then prove it.

Hey moron, are you claiming that the Clintons have $700 million in investment assets?

Mind you, this $700 million represents only ONE of Romney's various piles of cash.

Are you still pissed because Pilgrim allowed Hilliary to make some money on a cattle deal or the $4oo,000 of their own money they salvaged out of Whitewater? You know, two deals worth together less than $1.5 mil. Ones that a GOP dominated Congress investigated and found nothing illegal or unethical? How stupid are you, anyways?

Sen. Ben Sasse calls for ed board member to resign over Obama 'half-breed' blog posts

Ed board member resists pressure to resign over Obama 'half breed' remarks on blog
Leader of Nebraska teachers union denounces Obama 'half breed' remarks on blog
Ricketts condemns articles' description of Obama as 'half breed'; ed board member will shut down blog

Posted: Friday, January 16, 2015 8:00 pm

By Joe Dejka / World-Herald staff writer

Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse on Friday called on Pat McPherson to resign from the Nebraska State Board of Education.

Sasse’s comments ratchet up political pressure on McPherson, the Republican under siege for bigoted postings on his blog.

Although McPherson has been defiant in the face of political and public pressure, such pressure appears to be the most viable option for critics who want him out.

State board members can’t be recalled, and impeachment is reserved for more severe breaches of public trust.

Sasse said people must know the board “is being piloted by folks who just wake up every morning thinking about nothing more than equal opportunity for everybody, that in Nebraska you’re going to have an opportunity to realize your dreams regardless of what color you are.

“Right now, it’s hard for me to see how that board can operate effectively.”

McPherson has disavowed the description of President Barack Obama as a “half breed” that appeared on his blog, the Objective Conservative. He said he did not author the five postings containing the term, which dated back to 2011. He blamed them on a contributor whom he had allowed to access the site; he declined to name the contributor.

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts called for his resignation Thursday, but two hours later McPherson issued a statement that he did not intend to resign.

Meantime, the two processes that the public typically employ to oust unpopular or misbehaving politicians appear off the table.

Impeachment typically involves malfeasance in office, criminal conduct or violation of the public trust, said Dave Domina, a Democrat who served as prosecutor in the 2006 impeachment trial of University of Nebraska regent David Hergert.

In the 1980s, Domina was appointed special attorney general to investigate the collapse of Commonwealth Savings Co. of Lincoln. That case led to the impeachment of then-Attorney General Paul Douglas, who was acquitted by the Nebraska Supreme Court.

“I don’t think stupidity is an impeachable offense,” Domina said Friday. “I don’t think bigotry is an impeachable offense. I think that the way officials who exhibit those behaviors are removed from office is by the ballot box and by public pressure making it clear that they can’t continue in office.”

Nebraska law authorizes recalling elected officials of various governing bodies, including school board members, and also elected officials of political subdivisions. The state board of education is neither a political subdivision nor is it specifically listed as subject to recall.

McPherson, in his written statement Thursday, said he would be giving no further statements or interviews.

In that statement, he said had not violated any statute or constitutional provision or any of the rules or regulations that pertain to his duties as a member of the board.

He said resigning would be “a tacit admission of the false accusations being made that I am a racist.”

McPherson said: “I eagerly await the opportunity to work with my fellow board members as well as with Governor Ricketts in improving education for all Nebraska children. I will work earnestly to support the needs of parents and teachers as well. We have lots of challenges and work to do.”

His presence to the board will be, at the very least, an awkward situation.

Three of the eight board members indicated he should resign, a fourth saying McPherson’s resignation would help the board move forward.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1077, [email protected]

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