Tag Archives: responsibilities

Election Fraud

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I follow a tax strategy discussion board on The Motley Fool and one question asked was whether the stipends a county pays its election monitors is whether the stipend is taxable income (whether or not a 1099 is issued.  Answer: Yes.)  This comment in the thread jumped out at me.

We both [husband and wife] got a stipend for the working at the polls [election monitor] this year…$150 each. The county did not ask for our SSN’s, nor a W-9.

There is no reason to believe this commenter is dishonest, but this lack of checking is election fraud waiting to happen.

A Hearing

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Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) refused to participate in one last Thursday—the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing for the purpose of questioning DHS Secretary Kirsten Nielsen about the Trump administration’s (illegal) immigration policy.  Never mind that Gutierrez is a member of that committee.  He was present long enough to chew her out for six minutes, concluding his tirade with

Shame on us for wearing our badge of Christianity during Christmas and allowing the secretary to come here and lie.

Nielsen responded, in part:

I’m not a liar. We’ve never had a policy for family separation. I’m happy to walk the gentleman through it again. A policy of family separation would mean that any family I encountered in the interior, I would separate. It would mean that any family that I found at a port of entry, I would separate.
It would mean that every single family that I found illegally crossing, we would separate. We did none of those. What we did do is uphold the laws that Congress has passed, and we prosecuted those who choose to come here illegally.

And

Nielsen said the administration had shown compassion by working with other northern triangle countries to help migrants “as soon in their journey as possible,” blasting the current system that puts them at the mercy of abusers, traffickers, and child exploiters.

The system, mind you, that as Nielsen had just pointed out, was carefully put in place by Congress—of which Gutierrez was a member in good standing and who raised not a scintilla of objection to that system.

She concluded:

I take personal offense on behalf of the 240,000 men and women of the Department of Homeland Security.

Yewbetcha.  But Gutierrez was too intimidated by facts to stay and hear them.

Of course, this is the same Gutierrez who sold his Obamacare vote to then-President Barack Obama (D) like a Thursday night hooker in return for Obama’s promise to deal with immigration.  Obama paid Gutierrez’ fee by producing a vapid Executive Order saying, in essence, “I’ll think about it.”  And Gutierrez meekly accepted it.  He has a history, too, of running out when he doesn’t want to hear what’s being said.

The Progressive-Democrat Gutierrez: a streetwalking coward then and a Chamber coward today.

A US Appellate Court Thinks Americans Are Grindingly Stupid

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Kellogg’s makes Cheez-Its, a cheesy, corny confection that’s attractive to lots of folks, especially at boring parties.  Some versions of this snack are marketed as “Whole Grain” or “Made With Whole Grain,” and the text on the packaging makes plain that this means 5 to 8 grams of whole grain for each 29-gram serving along with the primary ingredient being “enriched flour.”

This is too confusing for three women to bear, so they sued.  One of the women went so far as to claim she was injured by all of this, yet, were the packaging only changed, she would continue to purchase the products in the future (where are the feminists over this feigned stupidity?).  There started out some sanity in this idiocy:

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2017, ruling that the “Whole Grains” wording was factually correct. In toto, the label “would neither mislead nor deceive a reasonable consumer.”

Amazingly, the 2nd Circuit reversed.

Additional verbiage on the front and side of the package is no defense, the court said.

The 2nd Circuit thinks Americans are just too stupid for words.  Or it finds entirely reasonable that Americans are too mind-numbingly lazy to read a simple label.

What He Said

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Alphabet’s Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, testified before the House Judiciary Committee last Tuesday, and he declined to justify his company’s decision to use the Southern Poverty Law Center as what the company calls a “trusted flagger,” a facility whereby these Trusted Ones can identify speech of which they personally disapprove as hate speech and thereby have it censored from Google’s products.  Pichai also was unable to explain why Google predominantly censored Conservative speech.  This prompted Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX) to take official notice of Pichai’s own bias.

You’re so surrounded by liberality that hates conservatism, hates people that really love our Constitution and the freedom it’s afforded people like you, that you don’t even recognize it.  It’s like a blind man not even knowing what light looks like, because you’re surrounded by darkness.

Sadly, the same can be said of Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey and his management team and of Facebook’s Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Director, Ads, Business Integrity Rob Leathern; and the rest of Zuckerberg’s management team, as well.

Not Throwing a Party is Exclusionary

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According to Howard Kurtz, self-styled news media “critic,” not having a party for members of the NLMSM is exclusionary.  President Donald Trump has decided not to throw a White House holiday party for the media this year.

the president’s decision to exclude the media establishment, at least for this year.

There it is, right from the jump.  Not having a big, expensive party is exclusionary.  Right up there with the actual bigotry of excluding blacks, or women, or… from access to a government facility or public business.

It gets really petty, too: not having this party is particularly terrible, Kurtz says.

The annual Christmas-season gathering was a significant perk for those covering the White House….

But it’s terrible that this perk won’t happen this year.

Journalists who attended the events, which featured a catered buffet of lamb chops, crab claws and elaborate desserts, got to roam the decorated mansion with a spouse or other family member, a friend or a colleague, adding to the invitation’s allure.

But it’s terrible that this right perk won’t be granted this year.

But the biggest fringe-benefit was the picture-taking sessions, in which the president and first lady would patiently pose with guests…copies of which were invariably sent home to mom.

Now Mom is being left out.  Heinous.

Aside from Kurtz’ whining over not getting his shiny, glittering toy this year, he gave his game away with his spin on his claimed motive for Trump’s decision.

President Trump has canceled the White House holiday party…a victim of his increasingly contentious relationship with major news organizations.

Here’s Kurtz insisting that it couldn’t possibly be because of the press’ increasingly contentious relationship with the President and First Lady—a hostility that the NLMSM has evinced in full throat from the very beginning of the Republican primaries.

How precious, how childish, can the NLMSM get?