Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today comparing President Obama’s statement about equal wages for women with the actual pay scales at the White House. Please follow the link above to read the entire article, but this is the gist of it (as posted at McClatchydc.com):

But a McClatchy review of White House salaries shows that when the same calculations that produced the 77 cents is applied to the White House, the average female pay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is less than the average male pay. When counted the same way that produced the 77-cent figure, the analysis found, women overall at the White House make 91 cents for every dollar men make. That’s an average salary of $84,082 for men and $76,516 for women.

 Asked about its own payroll, the White House said Wednesday that it should be measured by how it pays men and women in the same jobs, but not the kind of broad brush that compares overall male and female pay.

In other words, the White House doesn’t want to be measured by the same yardstick they use for everyone else. The 77-cent canard is based on averaging on the widest possible “big brush” scale. Their answer — that men and women doing the same work and responsibility get paid equally — holds true in the marketplace as well. In fact, that’s what the 91% gap shows, in both the White House and the Blau-Kahn study; the difference is in the rational choices made by women in the marketplace, not some kind of malicious conspiracy against the female gender.

Another reason the alternative media is necessary under the Obama Administration.

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Rewriting History

One of the problems with the Internet is that whenever you say something it can be instantly checked.

McClatchy is reporting that today President Obama stated that he did not draw a red line concerning the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.

The article reports the statement:

“I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” Obama said. “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’ credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.”

Well, there is an inconvenient video that was posted on YouTube a year ago:

The statement about the red line comes at about 1:54 in the video.

It would have been nice if a grown-up President had confirmed his previous statement and stood by it. I don’t support military action in Syria, but I certainly would have more respect for the President if he were more honest about his previous statements.

The problem with the statement made today is that the President typically refuses to take responsibility for his previous statements. There is no reason to assume that in the future he will take responsibility for his actions.

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There’s Leaking And Then There’s Leaking

Recently Fox News reporter James Rosen had his privacy seriously invaded by the Obama Administration because he leaked some information on North Korea (see rightwinggranny.com). Well, evidently the Obama Administration takes some leaks more seriously than others.

Yesterday McClatchy News reported that the Obama Administration has revealed plans for a secret Israeli military base.

The article reports:

The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility,” said an Israeli military official who commented on the publication of the proposal but declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the facility. He declined to say whether plans for the facility have been altered as a result of the disclosure.

“This is more than worrying, it is shocking,” he said.

I understand the need for basic information during the bidding process, but this is ridiculous. The Obama Administration previously leaked information about the Stuxnet Virus that slowed down Iran’s nuclear program (see rightwinggranny.com). That information was also considered classified by Israel.

There seems to be a double standard in the Obama Administration on leaking classified information.

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The Seamy Side Of The Internal Revenue Service

It seems rather obvious that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was a little unfair to to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but there is more to the story. Hot Air posted an article yesterday about some other very questionable activities the IRS was engaging in during the past few years.

The article at Hot Air cites a McClatchy news story about IRS harrassment:

McClatchy includes the case of Catherine Engelbrecht, which CBS NewsSharyl Attkisson co-reported yesterday.  That case, of course, goes far beyond the IRS; Engelbrecht’s business got harassed by the FBI, ATF, and OSHA as well, which would mean coordination far above the Treasury Department.  They also include the case of an anti-abortion group that was told they couldn’t picket Planned Parenthood locations if they wanted to keep their exemption, and a Nebraska veteran who got hassled in an IRS audit over his donations to his church once he began donating to conservative causes.

John Eastman, a constitutional law professor and former Dean at Chapman University in California, posted an article at USA Today explaining an IRS abuse that took place during the debate on homosexual marriage in California in 2012.

Professor Eastman explains:

My organization was not the only conservative-linked political group or business that appears to have faced shady actions from IRS employees. ProPublica reported this week that the IRS handed over to them confidential documents of nine conservative organizations whose applications for non-profit status were still pending. Among them: Crossroads GPS, a key group backing Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign.

Our case was particularly egregious because the IRS leak of confidential information fed directly into an ongoing political battle. For months before March 2012, the pro-gay marriage HRC had been demanding that my group, NOM, publicly identify its major donors, something that NOM and many other non-profits refuse to do. The reason is simple. In the past, gay marriage advocates have used such information to launch campaigns of intimidation against traditional marriage supporters.

Just as gay marriage proponents were demanding the information, the IRS appears to have illegally given them exactly what they were looking for. The tax return released by the HRC contained the names and addresses of dozens of major donors to NOM. And there’s little doubt where the documents came from. The tax returns contained internal coding added by the IRS after the returns were originally submitted.

For the IRS to leak any organization’s tax return to its political opponents is an outrageous breach of ethics and, if proven, constitutes a felony. Every organization — liberal and conservative — should shudder at the idea of the IRS playing politics with its confidential tax return information. But the situation here is even more egregious because the head of the HRC was at the time serving as a national co-chair of President Obama’s re-election campaign.

On Tuesday the House Ways and Means Committee will hold hearings to allow the victims of IRS targeting to testify. During the next two weeks, the House Oversight Committee will be interviewing the ‘low level employees’ in Cincinnati who have been scapegoated for these crimes. It will be interesting to hear what they say about who was directing their activities. Keep in mind that targeting specific groups and releasing tax information is a crime. It may be an interesting week.Enhanced by Zemanta

Tax Hikes Under Any Other Name

Planet Washington, a McClatchy blog, posted a quick note today stating that the Obama administration is planning to pay for its proposed jobs bill entirely by tax increases. The thing to remember here is that companies (or corporations) do not pay taxes–consumers do. Any increase in corporate taxes will be passed on to the American consumer. This will raise prices and fuel inflation, decreasing the amount of money Americans have to spend and slowing down the economy rather than stimulating it. The plan suggested by President Obama will raise taxes on oil and gas companies by approximately $ 40 billion. Those tax increases will be passed on to the American consumer in the form of increased energy prices, which in turn will increase prices across the board. This is not a wise move at this time.

Reuters describes the plan as targeting tax breaks (an expression that probably did better in the focus groups than increasing taxes). The tax breaks being targeted are generally in line with the class warfare that this administration is known for. It is never mentioned that half of all Americans do not pay income tax. None of the tax breaks targeted are aimed at this group.

This is a chart from 2007 from the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute:

Who Pays How Much in Taxes

It seems to me that the problem of taxes is not that the rich are not taxed enough. First of all, the problem is the spending–not the income. Second of all, half the people in America have no interest in whether or not taxes are increased–they do not pay them. Therefore, they do not care if the spending is out of control.

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