Obama '08?

Government Pays Mosque it Considers Radical
IPT News
May 10, 2010

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1944/government-pays-mosque-it-considers-radical


Federal law enforcement officials call it a front for Hamas terrorists which "has been under numerous investigations for financing and [providing] aid and comfort to bad orgs and members."

The U.S. Census Bureau calls it landlord.

In gearing up for the 2010 Census, the General Services Administration (GSA) leased office space throughout the country. One location is a 6,654 square foot section of a two-story building on Edsall Road in Alexandria, Va. owned by the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque. The United States government is spending $582,000, or about $23,000 per month, to lease the space from November 2008 through the end of this year.

The GSA helped the Commerce Department find office space for the Census. A GSA spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment or for clarification of the lease's true cost. Fairfax County property records indicate that Dar Al-Hijrah bought the 40,000-square-foot building in May 2008 for $5.8 million.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism obtained the reports referencing Dar al-Hijrah through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records related to a brief detention of Anwar al-Awlaki, a former imam at the mosque now considered a leading terrorist recruiter. Those records were copies of TECS reports " a computer database operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Some of the reports released to the IPT are redacted.

TECS data generally provides a summary narrative and referral to more detailed case references and case agent contacts.

The TECS reports dated in 2002 obtained under this FOIA stated that Dar Al-Hijrah was "associated with Islamic extremists" and was "operating as a front for Hamas operatives in U.S." A report dated in December, 2007, said the mosque "has been linked to numerous individuals linked to terrorism financing" and "has also been associated with encouraging fraudulent marriages." Another December 2007 report advised Dar Al-Hijrah, "has been under numerous investigations for financing and proving (sic) aid and comfort to bad orgs and members."

The TECS reports indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) generated the information.

Federal law enforcement officials have become well acquainted with Dar al-Hijrah over the years.

It was home to Awlaki, the radical cleric, who today considered the inspiration to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hassan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who tried to detonate an explosive in his underpants on a flight to Detroit Christmas Day. Reports also indicate that Times Square attempted bomber Faisal Shahzad was inspired in part by Awlawki.

In February, Dar Al-Hijrah hosted a fundraiser for Sabri Benkahla, who is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in 2007 for obstruction of justice, perjury before a grand jury, and making false official statements to the FBI in the course of an investigation into the Virginia Jihad terror cell.

Other mosque founders and officials have been implicated in Hamas-support efforts.

One founder, Ismail Elbarasse, was an assistant to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. It was in Elbarasse's former home in Northern Virginia that FBI agents found a trove of internal documents from the Palestine Committee, a Hamas-support network in America created by the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to an FBI memorandum, Mohammad al-Hanooti was known publicly as "an active HAMAS supporter, purportedly holding fund-raising activities, as well as supporting visitors to the United States from Israel and Jordan, to speak on behalf of HAMAS." Al-Hanooti was Dar Al-Hijrah's imam from 1995-1999.

A former mosque trustee, Abdulhaleem Al-Ashqar, was convicted of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify about Hamas fundraising in the U.S. He helped organize a 1993 meeting of Hamas members and sympathizers in Philadelphia.

Attempts to obtain a copy of the lease from the GSA have been unsuccessful. A written request for a copy was submitted April 13, and its receipt was confirmed by a spokeswoman. The IPT sent a list of questions about the lease arrangement and the contents of the TECS reports to the GSA last Wednesday. A spokeswoman said the agency was "working on it," but could not say if it would ever issue a response.

In addition to the Census office, the Edsall Road building is home to a school run by the mosque and the Muslim American Society (MAS). A 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation found that MAS was the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Some of this information is publicly available. And the GSA could have learned about the DHS TECS reports by requesting a Federal Protective Service background check on its vendor.

The contract expires at the end of the year.

Read more at:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1944/government-pays-mosque-it-considers-radical

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/26/costly-irs-mandate-slipped-into-health-bill/

Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill
Posted by Chris Edwards

Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.

A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.

Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress.

In a recent summary, tax information firm RIA notes the types of transactions covered by the new 1099 rules:

The 2010 Health Care Act adds “amounts in consideration for property” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(1)) and “gross proceeds” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(2)) to the pre-2010 Health Care Act categories of payments for which an information return to IRS will be required if the $600 aggregate payment threshold is met in a tax year for any one payee. Thus, Congress says that for payments made after 2011, the term “payments” includes gross proceeds paid in consideration for property or services.

Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

Tax CPA Chris Hesse of LeMaster Daniels tells me:

Under the health legislation, the IRS could be receiving billions of more documents. Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments of rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when such payments are to entities other than corporations. Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases. And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations. This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.

There appears to have been little discussion before this damaging mandate was slipped into the health bill and rammed through Congress, but a few business groups did raise concerns. Here’s what the Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:

The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.

In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.

Private transactions are the core of a market economy, and the source of America’s growth and prosperity. Now the federal government is imposing a vast new web of red tape on perhaps billions of these growth-generating private exchanges.

For what purpose? So the spendthrift Congress can shake a few extra bucks out of private industry? The business sector is the generator of America’s high living standards, but most federal legislators just see it as a kitty to be raided or a cow to be milked dry.

I’m stunned that there wasn’t a broader debate before such a costly mandate was enacted. If it goes into effect, it will waste vast quantities of human effort in filling out forms, reworking computer systems, collecting and organizing data, and fighting the IRS. The struggling American economy can’t afford anymore suffocating tax regulations. This mandate is a giant deadweight loss. It should be repealed.

Chris Edwards • April 26, 2010 @ 11:57 am

Posted: May 14, 2010
4:48 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily


WASHINGTON " The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, already has drafted a plan for processing 13 million illegal alien applicants for amnesty in a 30-week period at an estimated cost of $1 billion, WND has learned.

The plan, a copy of which was obtained by WND, anticipates the approval of so-called "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" legislation pending in Congress and assumes a nine-month ramp-up period for processing of applications.

The undated draft report anticipates the possibility of the legislation requiring public benefits to amnesty applicants.

"If the statute requires interim benefits while application pending, issue discreet variant of status document (shorter term duration that [sic] if issued after prospective immigrant status granted)," the 14-page memo states.

Under the plan, applicants 14 through 79 years old would be required to submit themselves for photographs, a full set of fingerprints and a signature. A photo and single print would be required for others.

Only one outside contractor is discussed in the memo " Northrop Grumman " and the plan suggests negotiating a contract now, even before the legislation is approved. It also calls for volunteer help at local service centers and field offices.

The last time Washington attempted a push for amnesty under the guise of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," under President George W. Bush in 2007, the project triggered an outcry from talk radio and the public. It failed as a result. However, the political makeup of the Congress has changed since then, becoming even more Democratic.

Democrat leaders recognize their control of both houses is in jeopardy in the November elections but are determined to pass the amnesty program " though they abhor that word.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has enlisted evangelical leaders to promote the plan. Democrats are determined to get at least some Republican support for the measure so the party is not held to account for amnesty like it is for another unpopular piece of legislation following the health-care debate that already threatens many Democrat seats.

Even Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., formerly vociferous proponents of the plan during the Bush administration, have distanced themselves from efforts in the Senate to revive it.

"You can play a vital role," Schumer told religious leaders including Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and Mathew of Liberty Counsel, saying Republicans have great respect for them. "So please, if you could, help us get some Republicans just to sit in a room and talk to us."

Hitler is closer to the American right than to any other political position in the world.

And the whole business about saying a lie over and over again was originally coined to describe the Republican party.

If so, okie then could you give us a reason why YOU posted the results of a popularity poll?

You can't seriously expect adults to engage in intelligent conversations with you if your mind works in such an unsophisticated fashion.

If being politically correct or ultra liberal means being sophisticated, no thanks, I would rather have unsophisticated common sense any day. I am not going to throw out common sense in favor of your so-called idiotic sophistication.

And the whole business about saying a lie over and over again was originally coined to describe the Republican party.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

A lie told often enough becomes truth.

"There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

I never distort facts.

Today's term "progressive" basically translates into ultra socialist or communist . . . .

pro•gres•sive   [pruh-gres-iv] Show IPA "adjective 1. favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters: a progressive mayor.

Hitler was a leftist in may respects, in fact he was a socialist, although just a nationalist socialist, not an international one, which would have been closer to the communists of his day. Hitler in fact railed against capitalists, the rich, and Jews . . . .

Hitler was less interested in the "socialist" aspect of "national socialism" beyond moving Social Welfare administration from the Church to the State. Himself of provincial lower-middle-class origins, he disliked the mass working class of the big cities, and had no sympathy with the notions of attacking private property or the business class (which some early Nazis espoused).

Nazi ideology stressed the failures of communism, liberalism, and democracy, and supported the "racial purity of the German people" and that of other Northwestern Europeans.

The manner in which the questions are stated will predetermine the outcome. There are ways to state questions to obtain the answers the pollster wants.

In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question is a question that suggests the answer or contains the information the examiner is looking for.

I have known that for a very long time about liberal pollsters.

The important thing in an election is not simply that you like the candidate, but that you like him enough versus the other guy that you vote for him, so in a poll that asks if you like Obama is completely different than a poll asking if you would vote for the guy versus another candidate.

I use Rasmussen, I openly admit it and am not ashamed of it, because I think he is a credible pollster. He polls people not on how popular Obama is, but on how people approve or disapprove of the job he is doing.

ap•prove   [uh-proov] Show IPA verb, -proved, -prov•ing. "verb (used with object) 1. to speak or think favorably of; pronounce or consider agreeable or good; judge favorably: to approve the policies of the administration.

dis•ap•prove   [dis-uh-proov] Show IPA verb,-proved, -prov•ing. "verb (used with object) 1. to think (something) wrong or reprehensible; censure or condemn in opinion. 2. to withhold approval from; decline to sanction: The Senate disapproved the nominations. "verb (used without object) 3. to have an unfavorable opinion; express disapproval (usually fol. by of).

Words are my stock-in-trade. I use them precisely. Please do the same.

Words are my stock-in-trade. I use them precisely. Please do the same.