Arizona Utility Company Owner Getting Rate Payers to Pay HIS Income Taxes?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now this seems like a case of blatant influence peddling to me, but the owner of a water utility company in Arizona is seeking the assistance of a friendly state regulatory agency to allow him to charge his customers a higher rate so that he can use their money to pay his income taxes.

The Arizona Republic recently posted a story by Ryan Randazzo that breaks down all the players nicely, but it is a somewhat confusing story nonetheless.

It appears that a real estate developer named Ed Robson started the community of water customers in question, a community of some 10,000 homes in the southwest valley called Sun Lakes. Not surprisingly, Robson also owns Pima Utilities, the water company that serves that community and the one seeking the rate hike.
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Arizona Utility Company Owner Getting Rate Payers to Pay HIS Income Taxes?”


Another Tale of Our Anti-Parent DCFS Establishment (Updated)

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is a repost from earlier this year. I’ve added Shelley’s new video at the outset.

It is a sad truth that from coast to coast our departments of children and family service (DCFS) agencies are in disarray. All too often they ill serve the children they are supposed to be helping and they almost always step on the rights of parents without much bothering to give a good reading of the situation before action is taken. The travails of 13-year-old Chloe Faulkner is another such story. Taken from her parents, isolated in a world of faceless bureaucrats, used as a cash cow for state aide, abused, repeatedly raped, and eventually impregnated without her loving parents being given a chance to be heard, this tale is another DCFS/State intervention horror story.

In 2009 Chloe was a 13-year-old, home schooled, bright-eyed girl who had been diagnosed with the serious medical condition of Type 1 diabetes. Like many 13-year-olds she was in a rebellious stage, pushing back at a world of parental rules and the constrictions that her medical condition unfairly imposed upon her. And, like many rebelling teens, Chloe ran away one day, refusing to return home.
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Another Tale of Our Anti-Parent DCFS Establishment (Updated)”


Obama Puts Unions Ahead of a Healthy Economy, Free Trade

-By Warner Todd Huston

President Obama claims that he wants to “create jobs,” and is happily touting several policies that he claims will create jobs in this jobless, non-recovery. Unfortunately, all his polices really do is shore up the high cost unions that kill job growth. As GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConell says, Obama has “relentlessly pursued an agenda that is radically opposed” to job growth.

Speaking on the floor last Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “For two and a half years, Democrats in Washington have paid lip service to the idea of job creation — even as they’ve relentlessly pursued an agenda that is radically opposed to it… Democrats don’t want to admit that the government-driven policies of the past two and a half years are part of the problem. And until they do, nothing will change. Unless Democrats change their priorities and their policies, the threats of a downgrade won’t go away. The debt won’t get any smaller. Businesses won’t create the kind of jobs we need to build prosperity.
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Obama Puts Unions Ahead of a Healthy Economy, Free Trade”


Indiana County Throwing Man off His Own Property For Living in Camper

-By Warner Todd Huston

A county government in Indiana has decided that a man that is bothering no one, a man living a very simple lifestyle, a man living on his own property must be evicted from it. Why have these jackbooted government thugs decided that this must be done? Because the man has the gall to live so simply that he has no plumbing or electricity in the camper he is living in.

WISH TV news in Indiana told the tale of Dick Thompson, a 72-year-old man living on his own 38-acre property in Madison County. Thompson lives on the property with several horses, a dog, and a bird. He resides in an old camper that has no sewer and no electricity.

“I’m a country boy,” explains Thompson. “I just want to be left alone.”

The County claims that Thompson is “breaking ordinances and laws” because he refuses to get sewer service or electric hooked up. This is why the county has decided he is a criminal. The county has harassed Mr. Thompson with multiple court dates, threatening letters, and claims of fines and court actions. In fact, the courts told him he’d be evicted on Nov. 30 of this year.
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Indiana County Throwing Man off His Own Property For Living in Camper”


If You Got Cancer From Smoking, That’s YOUR Problem

-By Warner Todd Huston

The government’s newest great idea to save us all from ourselves is to put billboard sized photos of cancer victims on packs of cigarettes. Big pictures of guys with holes in their necks, lungs blackened, maybe even the occasional really yellow teeth, or perhaps the severely calloused thumb of a smoker who was constantly flicking his Bic will assault our eyes when we go to buy our smokes.

Whatever.

But does anyone really care about people that have damaged themselves for smoking? Not really. In fact, the logical reaction is to shrug one’s shoulders in a too-bad-for-you-pal way and move on with your life. The fact is, no one cares if you got cancer from smoking. It is not only your problem but it’s your fault.
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If You Got Cancer From Smoking, That’s YOUR Problem”


County Sues Man for Growing Veggies?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Where’s Michelle “the Green Witch” Obama when you need her? She might have been able to save a man in Dekalb County, Georgia from being sued by his own county for growing too many vegetables in his garden.

That’s right, you heard me: sued by the government for growing too many veggies.

Steve Miller plants two acres of crops each year and sells some at farmer’s markets and gives the rest away free to local residents.

How do county officials justify this harassment? Officials claim that Miller is in violation of zoning laws and has “unpermitted employees” on his property.
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County Sues Man for Growing Veggies?”


Policing for Profit – The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture

-By Warner Todd Huston

A group called the Institute for Justice (http://www.ij.org/) is doing yeoman’s work alerting everyone to the simply un-American powers that police agencies across the country have been afforded by an out-of-control government. Police agencies have been given ever increasing stormtrooper-like powers to steal your property and assets because they merely suspect you might have gotten it by illegal means. All across the country, from your local Barney Fife’s all the way to your favorite G-Men, police agencies are stealing private property with no trial, no jury, even no actual charges filed in many cases.

The IJ has published a great and ominous report on the abuse of forfeiture laws that is a must read.

Now, the germ of this theft is located in the RICOH-styled laws that were created to materially punish drug dealers outside of the result of long court battles. The initial idea was that drug dealers would be financially devastated as soon as they were apprehended. Cars, homes, money, investments, all summarily taken by what ever policing agency was fortunate enough to hit the jackpot by arresting a drug dealer.

Certainly few people have any sympathy for drug dealers and so, with little protest by voters, these sorts of forfeiture laws spread across the land very quickly. But like anything and everything government does, evil quickly follows the good idea. Road to hell, and all.

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Policing for Profit – The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture”


Government Is Not Our Friend

-By Warner Todd Huston

Small-government conservatives have always been suspicious of government. Whether city, county, state or federal all government is looked on as a troublesome but necessary evil that must be tightly controlled and oft times opposed. This anti-government attitude, of course, is a complete mystery to socialist Democrats. They just don’t understand why conservatives mistrust government and why they eye it suspiciously. So, looking for a way to explain in real terms why conservatives loathe government is sometimes not an easy task as the ideas are often very esoteric. Thank God the corrupt governments in Barack Obama’s Illinois are always there to supply a ready example of why government is often the enemy of a free people.

In that mien, here is another perfect example of how government often does not serve the voters, how it does what ever it wants to do despite the voters, and how government often thinks it knows better than the very voters that it is supposed to serve.

In 2009 the Illinois State legislature in its Springfield-based capitol passed a video gambling law that for the first time legalized video poker machines across the state. The progress of this law was very contentious with most Republicans and some Democrats standing in opposition to this immoral legislation and a sop to the opposers was put in the bill as sweetener to assure passage. An “opt out” clause was put in the bill so that those conservative districts that were so opposed to video gambling could exclude themselves from allowing the immoral act of video gambling in their jurisdiction.
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Government Is Not Our Friend”


Firefighters Union ‘Sticks it’ to the City of Portland

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Oregonian has a disheartening story proving once again why public employees unions should be outlawed.

Here we have a case of a criminal fireman who ripped off the city through a false claim of being injured and unable to work, he admits his guilt and doesn’t press the city for more benefits, yet the union DOES take the city to court to get undeserved benefits for this layabout fireman!

For 12 years fireman Tom Hurley ripped off the city of Portland’s fireman’s disability fund by receiving monthly checks of $3,200 at the taxpayer’s expense despite that he really wasn’t disabled. In fact, he took the city’s money and put himself through cooking school and then went to work in the food service industry. All paid for by the taxpayers.

And when the city finally wised up and cut him off from the honey pot, even Hurley didn’t appeal the decision. He just shrugged his shoulders and moved forward with his new career as a chef.

But the union would have none of this “end of benefits” business. No, the union wouldn’t move on. The union took the City of Portland to court to force the city to keep paying this former fireman scam artist. The union wants the city to pay this layabout fireman $103,000 in “lost” disability payments.

The city is claiming it wants to “go to war” over this whole thing. Let’s hope they do and let’s hope they win. This union ripoff of the taxpayers is unconscionable.
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Firefighters Union ‘Sticks it’ to the City of Portland”


Wall Street Journal Echoing The Blog

-By Warner Todd Huston

That’s right, it’s time to do the happy dance. Our drum beat of unions being antithetical to good government has, today, been echoed by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial board piece titled “The Public-Union Ascendancy.”

OK, OK, I am not silly enough to imagine that the WSJ is hanging on every word we here at the blog say — though I was told by John Fund a few months ago when we met in Chicago that he has read a lot of my work — but it is still good to see that we aren’t the only ones thinking along these lines.

The Journal has some interesting states to report on the increase in public sector leeches… um, I mean unions… and makes the salient point that it isn’t good.

The money paragraph sounds like something I’ve written a dozen times:
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Wall Street Journal Echoing The Blog”


Heritage: Unions Ate Your Raise

-By Warner Todd Huston

James Sherk has a very good post over at the Heritage Foundation’s The Foundry blog about how unions have hurt us all by fighting for tax increases.

Unions almost never go on strike anymore. Instead, they fight to get more for their members by lobbying for tax increases. Unions spent tens of millions of dollars last year campaigning for higher taxes across the country: Illinois. California. Minnesota. Washington State. Arizona. In many cases they have succeeded.

Nearly every day now we are visited with more proof of how public employees unions are a danger to this country and Sherk has shown us yet another example.

Sherk reports that in Oregon the public employees unions spent $700 million dollars to increase taxes on the people of Oregon. The unions wanted higher taxes to protect their undeservedly high salaries and rich benefits while the regular folks of the Beaver State lost jobs, had their pay cut, and were generally finding hard times — like the rest of normal, non-government worker America.

Not only are unions working against the best interests of the voters, but they are also working to allow out-of-control spending and irresponsibility in government to grow.

Unions are not only antithetical to good government, they are dangerous to our individual prosperity.
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Heritage: Unions Ate Your Raise”


Unions to Rake in $19 Billion Per Year From Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

Over at BigGovernment.com, Don Loos posited an excellent reason about why the big public employees unions are falling all over themselves to help Obama force Obamacare down America’s throats even though their members would lose their lavish healthcare plans as a result. The reason? $19 billion in likely dues money that these unions will get when helathcare is taken over by the federal government is the reason.

It is true that everyone in the country will be hurt by the current Obamacare policies, it is true that everyone will experience less healthcare coverage at higher costs, it is true that government will ration healthcare and the elderly and very young will find less access to healthcare, it is true that government will destroy the best healthcare in the world. But the bosses of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME), Andy Stern and Gerald McEntee, feel that the trade offs will be worth the loss.

… and to be sure neither Stern nor McEntee will lose their own Cadillac healthcare plans regardless.
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Unions to Rake in $19 Billion Per Year From Obamacare”


Unions, Energy Industry Tops in Political Contributions

-By Warner Todd Huston

According to FollowTheMoney.org unions were some of the most generous with donations to political candidates and causes during the 2007-2008 donation cycle, the last cycle full reporting is known for. A close second place goes to the energy industry with Indian interests coming in third.

Out of the top 50 highest amounts given to political efforts unions donated $223,533,678 to political causes showing that, while unions make up less than 20 percent of the American work force, they account for some of the largest in political donations.

Unfortunately, many of those top donors are public employees unions meaning that our tax dollars are caught in a revolving door with tax money going to public employees who then turn around and donate some of that tax money right back to politicians and their campaign funds in order for those politicians to themselves turn right back around and pass laws that give public employees unions more money!
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Unions, Energy Industry Tops in Political Contributions”


Women Becoming Majority of Union Workers

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Associated Press had an interesting article reporting that women are fast becoming the majority of union members and will be the majority in 10 years if current trends continue.

As it stand now, women make up 45 percent of union members today, up from 35 percent in 1983. Apparently white men now only make up 38 percent of the union workforce, down from almost 52 percent in ’83.

The AP notes that this preponderance of women is changing the goals of union negotiators.

“When you have a majority of women in the labor movement, issues like work-family balance, paid sick days and paid parental leave become more important,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the left-leaning think tank and one of the authors of the report.

And what has caused this change? The growth of public, government unions. At this point, the AP reports, that 49 percent of all union members are now working for local, state, and federal workers in public employees unions. 61 percent of public employees are female.
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Women Becoming Majority of Union Workers”


Senate Calls Its Healthcare Plan Ca Ca. No Really!

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, is it just me or did the Democrats on the Senate’s health committee make their healthcare plan out to be …well, poo poo? It can’t be just me. Look at the name they’ve chosen for their healthcare plan. They have called it the Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans plan. The acronym for that would be QAHCAA. How else can one pronounce that but cahca? And what is that closest to but ca ca? That’s a little Spanish lingo for… well, poo poo.

Yes, the Senate is raining QAHCAA down upon us with its healthcare bill. Soon we’ll be knee deep in QAHCAA. QAHCAA will be coming out our ears. The whole thing is a pile of QAHCAA. The Senate has jammed 10 pounds of QAHCAA into a 5 pound bag. We are all in deep QAHCAA.

Nice going Democrats. That is one fine acronym for your bill. Very fitting. Right on. Props to what ever half-witted staffer you let come up with that one!

(H/T P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters.org)


Snowe Dampens Dems Healthcare Ardor and Polls Begin to Turn

-By Warner Todd Huston

Senator Olympia Snowe is the Democrat’s one great hope for “bi-partisan” healthcare. Of course, by that Democrats mean that Snowe is the only one that will give them any cover at all that what they are considering could possibly appeal across party lines. But, even Snowe is saying that the healthcare train needs to be slowed down despite Obama’s cries for full speed ahead.

Snowe has recently begun to say that a vote on the bill before the August recess, as Obama keeps pushing for, is way too soon and that the Senate needs to slow down considerably.

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Snowe Dampens Dems Healthcare Ardor and Polls Begin to Turn”


Pelosi Says Surtax Could go for Deficit Reduction, too?

-By Warner Todd Huston

I’m sorry, I’m not much for name calling but this woman is an idiot. She is claiming that the oppressive surtax can “also” go to retire the Obama $1 trillion deficit if there is any “left over” after Obamacare is “paid for”!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Democrats could use a proposed new tax on the wealthy to pay down the deficit, if there’s money left over after funding healthcare reform.

But, the CBO is claiming that Obamacare will cost in excess of $1 trillion and the surtax is “only” going to raise $544 billion. How, exactly, is there supposed to be anything “left over” after Obamacare is “paid for.”

I know, I just used a lot of quote marks, but they are deservedly derisory.

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Pelosi Says Surtax Could go for Deficit Reduction, too?”


Arlington Cemetery Records a Mess

-By Warner Todd Huston

Salon.com has a disheartening story about the troubles at the national cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, those sacred grounds were thousands upon thousands of our nation’s heroes and notables have been buried. Infuriatingly, it seems that cemetery records are a mess, some of them not corresponding to headstones, many garbled or lost.

This is the nation’s most revered cemetery yet some soldier’s names are lost to the permanent record, some burials are unknown because of failed record keeping, it is even thought that some headstones are on the wrong graves.
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Arlington Cemetery Records a Mess”


Obama’s Stimulus Stimulates Nothing But Votes for Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

Of his Social Security program, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that the whole thing had nothing to do with helping the aged. “They were politics all the way through,” he said of his Social Security payroll withholding taxes. In other words, the So. Sec. program was created solely to give the Democrat Party a permanent majority on the “we care” ticket. FDR knew from the get-go that the program was an unsustainable sham but it was all about politics, not old people anyway.

Seventy some years later Barack Obama was praised as a second coming of FDR when he ran for office. His promises of everything for everyone were hailed as a second new deal. As we all know the economy took a dive at the tail of 2008, it continued apace into 2009 and once Obama took office he campaigned hard for a “stimulus” plan to lift America from its economic doldrums. It was an “emergency” he said, we couldn’t get by without it, he claimed. He cared about all of America, you see, and he, the great father in Washington, had the cure for what ails us. The great god of D.C. loved all his children we were sonorously informed.

Well, maybe not all. You see, just as FDR’s “help” only went to further his own political goals and not the country’s economic recovery, Barack Obama’s benevolence seems to have benefited mostly those that voted for him.

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Obama’s Stimulus Stimulates Nothing But Votes for Obama”


Obama Wants to Fine YOU for Not Bowing to HIS Wishes

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, one of the aspects of Obamacare that is not being talked about too much is the fines Obama will inflict on average, middle class Americans that don’t want to join his nationalized healthcare service.

At this point, Obama favors a $1,000 fine to those of you that don’t want any part of a nationalized system under his control. That’s $1,000 of your hard earned money swiped away from you for not knuckling under to his dictats.

For an interesting exercise, I thought I’d check around the web to see what fines around the country would be for other things, things that are far more egregious of a violation of the law. Things like illegal drug possession, assault, or drunken driving.

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Obama Wants to Fine YOU for Not Bowing to HIS Wishes”


ACORN Shenanigans in South Carolina

-By Warner Todd Huston

Recently, the Smosska Corporation swooped into Florence, South Carolina promising to instantly create some 400 new jobs with an assurance of 3,000 before next year is out. For an area that needs jobs this seemed like welcome news.

Last week a job fair was held in Florence by the new company at which free health care was offered those that would be hired. At that time an aptitude test was taken by applicants if, that is, they had the $40 fee to pay to take the thing. The company claimed this “fee” would be used to pay for drug tests if they were hired. This fee, however, made some people curious.

The fee and several other curious characteristics of this company caused suspicions to be raised about its legitimacy. It turns out, there is not yet an actual building in which this Smosska Corporation is housed, there don’t seem to be too many current employees, and there doesn’t seem to have been any actual products created by Smosska in the past — though the corporation is supposed to have been formed in 2001. Even the original email address given out was a Yahoo account, not an official corporate web host address.

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ACORN Shenanigans in South Carolina”


Dems Address Paying For It

-By Warner Todd Huston

Soak the “rich.” That’s the plan. In fact, that is always the plan with tax and spend Democrats. This time it is a new “surtax” on Americans making over $250,000 a year (or $350,000 per couple) to pay for Obamacare.

Ominously, the plan has a hike mechanism right at the outset as Charlie Rangel (D, NY), head of the House Ways and Means Committee, has inserted language that will raise the tax higher if they don’t get as much money as they want with this first dip into the rich folk’s wallets. If anyone thinks Democrats will imagine they’ve gotten enough the first time and that the hike trigger doesn’t need to be pulled… well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

So, who will this hit? Can anyone doubt that it will be doctors themselves? After such a raid into American’s paychecks, it will be doctors that will find that they are being taxed in order to pay themselves further reduced rates by government reimbursements through this new healthcare system.

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Dems Address Paying For It”


Democrats proving Again That Compromise is Not an Option on Healthcare

-By Warner Todd Huston

In this report we get a nice one-two punch. Not only are we seeing Democrats once again refusing even a tiny compromise with Republicans on Obama’s takeover of nearly 20% of our economy with his healthcare plans, but we also get to see another example of why Huffington Post is not journalism. I like a nice one-two punch for a Wednesday.

For one thing, the HuffPo article hilariously calls Democrat pitbull Rahm Emanuel a “conservative Democrat.” But let’s start with the more important political point and deal with the HuffPo chicanery second.

In a HuffPo “report” by Sam Stein, we see leftists, and extreme activists getting their shorts in a wad over the proposition from Republicans that the so-called public option only be set off by a “trigger,” one that would usher in that public option if insurance companies “fail to deliver” the affordable coverage that Obama is demanding. This trigger idea would exclude the public option at the outset only to have it come in later if needed.

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Democrats proving Again That Compromise is Not an Option on Healthcare”


State Workers Worried About Losing ‘Cadillac’ Medical Benefits

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you want to see the logical disconnect of unions and their lap dog lawmakers where it concerns costs to government, one need look no further than the over indulgent healthcare plan that New Hampshire’s state workers have been lavished with.

On July 4, the Boston Globe published a story that details the incredibly rich healthcare plan that state workers have succeeded in getting due to union negotiations with pliant Democrat lawmakers. It seems that they get just about any kind of care they want and all for “free.” It’s called a “Cadillac” healthcare plan and it is amazing for its coverage.

According to the Globe, surgery is free for New Hampshire state workers. So are MRIs, CT scans and X-Rays. It gets even more indulgent.

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State Workers Worried About Losing ‘Cadillac’ Medical Benefits”


Democrats Will Reveal How They Want to ‘Pay’ For Healthcare

-By Warner Todd Huston

We may know by the end of the week how the Democrats are claiming they will pay for their healthcare plans. News out of the House of Representatives is that they will introduce their bill on either Thursday or Friday of this week.

In the mean time, on Tuesday a caucus meeting with Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) will be held on Tuesday to discuss the funding plans. This will be followed by a brief by House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) while Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will speak on Friday. Rangel is last because his committee is in charge of finding the tax increases that will pay for the plan.

Democrats also say that the “public option” will be a prominent feature of their bill and will be similar to the current Medicare system.

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Democrats Will Reveal How They Want to ‘Pay’ For Healthcare”


Reid, Pelosi Don’t Want Healthcare Bill Read by Congress, Public Before Vote

-By Warner Todd Huston

Amazingly, neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev) nor Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif) want to give Congress or the public much time to read the upcoming Healthcare bills they are rushing through their respective chambers before forcing a “yes” or “no” vote on them.

In a recent interview, Senator Reid was asked if he’d commit to giving the Senate and the public a week to digest any healthcare “reform” bill before he brought the bill up for a vote. Reid however, refused to make such a commitment.

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Reid, Pelosi Don’t Want Healthcare Bill Read by Congress, Public Before Vote”


Businesses Hit Hard With Obamacare, Say Goodbye to Mom and Pop Stores

-By Warner Todd Huston

The most insidious part of Obamacare is the backdoor taxes, and defacto control of our healthcare by the nanny state that President Obama’s plan is loaded with. And here is another one that is not getting much play. Employers would be socked with requirements to pay for 72.5 percent of the cost of insurance premiums for their full-time employees under the plan being considered in the House.

They would also be required to pick up an as yet undetermined percentage of the insurance plans for part-time employees, as well. This alone will insure that part-time jobs across the nation are terminated for the destructive cost involved in having them.

Or, conversely, many full-time jobs will be eliminated if the costs of insurance is so steep and that of part-timers less so. Either way, jobs will be lost because of these new, never before seen expenses.

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Businesses Hit Hard With Obamacare, Say Goodbye to Mom and Pop Stores”