ONE:

On the issue in which Kommissar Ummm Politboro ooops! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continuously slams Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with accusations that he hasn’t paid any taxes in ten years and demands that he show us his tax returns for said decade, there seems to be a slight, er, discrepancy, here…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid again deflected questions Monday about releasing his tax returns, even as he continued to pound the demand for Mitt Romney to make more of his own public.

Instead, Reid pointed to the financial disclosure forms he files as a member of Congress, which provide different information.

“I’m a member of Congress now, I don’t make too much money,” said Reid, whose net worth was estimated at $10 million in 2010. “But it’s all listed every year.”

Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson told POLITICO last week that the majority leader will not release his tax returns, writing: “He’s not running for president. … He has of course released more than 30 years of detailed [personal finance disclosures]. There is exponentially more information available to the public about Sen. Reid’s financial life than there is about Mitt Romney’s.”

Conservatives have begun accusing Reid of hypocrisy for his attacks on Romney. And the Las Vegas Review-Journal — in a somewhat different context — on Monday resurrected a 1974 statement in which Reid said: “Any man or woman who will not be completely candid about his or her finances does not deserve to be in public office.”

Asked about that statement at a news conference Monday in Nevada, Reid responded: “In 1974, I wasn’t in Congress.

“All you have to do is go look,” he added. “I file every year, every stock trade, every piece of land I buy, all the money I have, it has the value of my homes, it’s got it all there.”

Of course, it is, communist dirt bag.

TWO:

Then we have 70 Facts about the U.S. Economy that Barack Osama Obama doesn’t want We, the People to see.

Let’s have a look…

$3.59 - When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.

22 - It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.

23 - According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.

30 - Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.

32 - The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

35 - U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.

40 - The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.

42 - According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.

48 - Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

49 - Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.

53 - Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

60 - According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.

61 - At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.

63 - One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.

71 - Today, 71 percent of all small business owners believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.

80 - Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.

81 - Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by 81 percent since 1989.

85 - 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.

86 - According to one survey, 86 percent of Americans workers in their sixties say that they will continue working past their 65th birthday.

90 - In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

93 - The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.

95 - The middle class continues to shrink - 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.

107 - Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

350 - The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.

400 - According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

$500 - In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.

627 - In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.

877 - 20,000 workers recently applied for just 877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama.

900 - Auto parts exports from China to the United States have increased by more than 900 percent since the year 2000.

$1580 - When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1580 an ounce.

1700 - Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971.

2016 - It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2016.

$4155 - The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.

$4300 - The amount by which real median household income has declined since Barack Obama entered the White House.

$6000 - If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

$10,000 - According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

49,000 - In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.

50,000 - The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

56,000 - The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

$85,000 - According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.

$175,587 - The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.

$328,404 - Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

$361,330 - This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.

440,00 - If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.

500,000 - According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

2,000,000 - Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.

$2,000,000 - At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.

2,600,000 - In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

5,400,000 - When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.

16,000,000 - It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

$20,000,000 - The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.

25,000,000 - Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

40,000,000 - According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

46,405,204 - The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.

88,000,000 - Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.

100,000,000 - Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.

$150,000,000 - This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.

$2,000,000,000 - The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.

$147,000,000,000 - In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.

295,500,000,000 - Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.

$359,100,000,000 - During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.

$454,000,000,000 - During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.

$1,000,000,000,000 - The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.

$1,170,000,000,000 - China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.

$1,600,000,000,000 - The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.

$5,000,000,000,000 - The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.

$5,000,000,000,000 - What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.

$11,440,000,000,000 - The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.

$15,734,596,578,458.59 - The U.S. national debt as of June 7, 2012.

$200,000,000,000,000 - Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.

And there are people who call themselves Americans who would actually consider voting to reelect that…miserable failure… to the presidency?

Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh; One has to presume, even with a precedent like Jimmy Carter, that no political party is going to expend their time and their capital pushing a total moron in the direction of the White House, so perhaps Barack Hussein is NOT a failure, maybe he’s destroying America, dismantling us from the bottom of our foundation upward, with every intention of doing so.

The good Lord only knows that like thinkers in the Communist Party have been trying for years to do what he’s already accomplished in less than a single term, so maybe from his and his leftist friends’ perspective, he’s very close to being a strong success at finally bringing our great nation to its knees…

The infamous Ninth Circuit (9th Circus) Court of Appeals, the friends of every communist and every other anti-American entity that needs some Constitution haters to legislate from the bench on their behalf are going on vacation. Yee hoo!

Two U.S. senators are criticizing a federal court system for planning to hold its annual conference at a pricey Hawaiian resort in August.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference plans to gather at a Maui hotel that costs upwards of $230 a night – for four nights. Taxpayers will foot the lodging and travel tab, which could exceed a million dollars, Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) complained.

Yes, we, the taxpayer get to treat those so-called judges and their retinue to an all expenses paid wing ding in Hawaii!

Aside from the business meetings, activities available to attendees include golfing, yoga, surfing lesions, snorkeling, Zumba (a Latin-inspired dance program), and a tennis tournament.

I’m sure that all the fun stuff is of little concern to those esteemed, patriotic, God-fearing individuals who attempted to extract “one nation under God” from the pledge of allegiance; They’re only headed to the white sands, blue waters and wonderful tropical weather to closet themselves for solemn dialogue on the Letter of the Law.

Just ask them:

“While the [court’s web] site makes clear that government funds are not to be used for any recreational or sporting activities and that court related matters will be substantively considered, the programs reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice,” Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a letter to Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.

The Ninth Circuit’s website says the conference is authorized by law “for the purpose of considering the business of the courts and advising means of improving the administration of justice within the circuit.”

Of course it is.

Liberals don’t care which end of the tax system they grab our money from: If they can’t steal it by overtaxing us, they’ll steal it through frivolous spending.

The entire story is here.

From One News Now:

Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Texas for denying it tax dollars for a Medicaid program.

The Obama administration stopped sending federal money for contraception and check-ups for low-income women in Texas when the state decided not to allocate the money to organizations that perform abortions.

Elizabeth Graham of Texas Right to Life says the state instead decided to give program funding to 1,400 qualified providers in the state.

“Planned Parenthood and abortion providers are suing the state for locking them out of the women’s health program because they are desperate to keep their hands in the pockets of taxpayers to promote their abortion agenda,” she says.

Planned Parenthood is basically claiming discrimination because they are abortion providers.

“Really, the state is obligated to distribute much-coveted healthcare dollars to programs and agencies that best serve a large population and programs that have a broad application across the state,” comments the spokeswoman.

Texas will be allocating the money to healthcare providers that have no affiliation with abortion providers, because — as Graham emphasizes — abortion is not healthcare.

…abortion is not healthcare, amen to that!

Yet, Planned Parenthood is determined to finance as much baby murder as it can using our tax dollars. Is that abonimable, or what?

Of course, anyone who’s visited Hard Astarboard over a period of time knows how we classify the likes of Planned Parenthood.

The global warming con artists are still at it, trying to maintain their bread & butter “research” grants on the taxpayer’s dime.

From WesleyPruden via Jewish World Review:

“Climate research,” the New York Times confidently assures us, “stands at a crossroads.” This means that a lot of research scientists are standing at the crossroads, holding out paper bags like trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, standing in line for taxpayer largesse to fill ‘em up.

These specialists in shakedown “science,” who speak only in hyperbole, are calling the weather of 2011 the worst in history, or at least in memory, or maybe a decade, and say they could have found useful links between disasters and global-warming “science” by now if only they could shake down tightwad taxpayers for a few more millions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a little list of a dozen weather disasters of the year now swiftly passing into history — wildfires in Texas, floods on the Mississippi and tornadoes in Tornado Alley. Unfortunately for global-warming “scientists” ever on the scout for handouts, there were no bad hurricanes to report this year. Nevertheless, the speakers of hyperbole are making the best of the scant material at hand.

“I’ve been a meteorologist for 30 years and have never seen a year that comes close to matching 2011 for the number of astounding, extreme weather events,” the easily astounded Jeffrey Masters of the Weather Underground web site tells the newspaper, which is always alert for opportunities to beat this favorite drum. “Looking back in the historical record, which goes back to the late 1800s, I can’t find anything that compares, either.”

Maybe he should look a little harder. The disasters, calamities and other inconveniences blamed on changing weather include not only floods and fires in the United States but similar disasters in Australia, the Philippines and Southeast Asia, where calamity is part of something called “life.” Anyone spooked by “unprecedented flooding” in the Mississippi River Valley in the United States should check the precedents of the great floods of 1927 and 1937, when much of Arkansas, Misssissippi and Louisiana lay underwater for weeks, and mud even longer. The hyperbolic claims that man has never been so badly abused by the weather, and that man himself has asked for it with his wild and wicked ways abusing nature, are given the lie by the fact that the weather has been wild and wicked in many millennia before this one, when there were not nearly so many of us stalking the planet for opportunities to make mischief.

Pruden tells it soooooo well.

In these tough economic times when Congress is having deadlocked debates about taxation and government spending, the rip-offs “scientists” of the global warming cabal should be among the first casualties of the elimination of wasteful largesse.

After all, we have enough oily, soulless crooks sending us spam from Nigeria to support, so why pay people of the same ilk to run con jobs on the American taxpayer?

That’s right, sleaze.

AARP sold out every senior citizen, member or not, when they endorsed the left’s monstrous HealthCare bill.

When government says it’s set to do something for the little guy, hang on to your wallet.

The latest evidence for this came in a congressional report released last week, showing that the seniors lobby (and insurance giant) AARP stands to make more than $1 billion as a result of ObamaCare.

The game works this way: The new health-care law contains more than $136 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, which now covers one in five seniors. As a result, according to Medicare’s chief actuary, at least 7 million seniors will be forced out of their Medicare Advantage plan and back into traditional Medicare.

But since traditional Medicare lacks several Medicare Advantage benefits, many will have to buy so-called “Medigap” policies to make up the difference. And who’s the nation’s largest marketer of Medigap plans? The AARP.

An 18-month congressional probe found that the AARP stands to make $55 million to $166 million in one year alone from seniors switching from Medicare Advantage to AARP Medigap plans. Over the next 10 years, it would earn more than $1 billion from new customers. Business is good if you can get the government to put your competitors out of business.

And AARP’s self serving slice of the pie is just the tip of an iceberg. To continue this very revealing Michael Tanner column:

The AARP isn’t the only big ObamaCare winner to come to light in the last few days. A hearing by the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations disclosed that labor unions and big businesses — including General Electric, Verizon, AT&T and IBM — have received nearly $1.9 billion in payments under the new health-care law to help offset health-insurance costs for early retirees.

The biggest single recipient: the United Auto Workers, which got nearly $207 million in taxpayer money. By the time the feds finish handing out funds to well-connected companies and unions, it’s expected to have cost taxpayers $5 billion.

The program doesn’t even require companies or unions to demonstrate any “financial need” for the subsidy. As a result, it enables companies to incentivize early retirement for older employees, saving the companies money and improving their balance sheets — with taxpayers footing the bill.

This is nothing new, of course. ObamaCare has benefited special interests and big businesses from the start. The major pharmaceutical firms got a requirement that all insurers must cover their products. That’s one reason why Big Pharma spent more than $150 million on ads in favor of the bill.

Other provider groups and beneficiary constituencies are pursuing a similar strategy. They’ve been lobbying a government panel that will determine the benefits that must be included in every insurance plan. At recent hearings, interests ranging from the in-vitro-fertilization industry to autism groups showed up to demand their share of the spoils.

Even large insurers played the game: They got a mandate requiring everyone to buy their product. Sure, they’ll have to adjust to some costly new regulations, and those added benefits will be expensive, but they can simply pass the costs on to consumers via higher premiums. After all, what can consumers do? If they decide not to buy insurance, the government will punish them.

Nor should we forget that politically connected firms and unions have regularly received waivers from ObamaCare’s worst provisions.

So one year in, ObamaCare’s big winners are becoming clear: Big Business, Big Labor and special-interest lobbies. The only losers are the American people.

America’s sure come the wrong a long way since the last of the true statesmen-in-government died out… A long time ago.

I just read this week’s Ann Coulter column, Look For the Union Fable and thought I’d post it in case anyone coming to visit Hard Astarboard hasn’t seen it yet.

A sampling:

The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

(snip)

It used to be widely understood that collective bargaining has no place in government employment. In 1937, the American president beloved by liberals, FDR, warned that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.” George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO for a quarter century, said unions were not appropriate for civil servants. As recently as 1978, the vast majority of states prohibited unionization of government employees.

(Snip2)

But government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a “living wage” — all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements.

Read the entire column.

I’ve always thought that a strange title for an organization that’s more a Murder Incorporated for defenseless unborn, but very much alive, babies.

Naturally, since baby murder goes well, somehow, with the doctrine that’s become popular among our intellectual elite and the “progressive” politicians they elect, it is also supported by the mainstream media who, as we know, have a habit of reporting only what is convenient for the public to know in order to press their political agendas. As often as not, there are a few twists, spins and, to those who actively seek the truth, some profoundly loud omissions.

Fortunately, there are a few honest journalists out there, including those who write for the Culture and Media Institute.

Speaking of which…

Media Ignore Planned Parenthood’s $1.3 Billion Federal Funding Discrepancy

Networks and newspapers silent on government report contradicting abortion group’s taxpayer funding figures.

If $1.3 billion is unaccounted for and the media don’t report it, did it really happen?

According to an American Life League review of Planned Parenthood’s annual reports, the organization received more than $2 billion in federal grants and contracts between 2002 and 2008. A June 16 Government Accountability Report, however, found that the organization spent just $657.1 million of taxpayer money in the same time period.

The $1.3 billion discrepancy failed to catch the attention of the nation’s major media outlets. None of the networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) or major newspapers (Los Angeles times, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post) reported it.

A Culture and Media Institute review of coverage found that only one newspaper listed among Nexis’ “major newspapers” – The Houston Chronicle – even mentioned the GAO report. The Chronicle’s June 16 article noted that Planned Parenthood spent $657 million of federal money over seven years, but did not mention the income/outlay discrepancy.

Amazing, here are all these media institutions in whom the public place their (I would say “our”, except I don’t trust those leftist turds, not me) trust for news, and only one of them even seems to “know” about a “discrepancy” on the part of an organization that our government siphons hundreds of millions of our hard earned tax dollars to.

Don’t Follow the Money

The media have made Planned Parenthood a go-to source for several stories over the last six months, including debate over abortion language in health care reform legislation, the trial of the activist who killed abortionist Dr. George Tiller, and the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

From Dec. 28, 2009, to June 28, 2010, the broadcast networks and the “Big 4” newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood 56 times in news stories. None of those stories mentioned the GAO report, and only one article reported the amount of federal money going to Planned Parenthood.

The February 27 article in The New York Times mentioned an investigative operation by pro-life activist Lila Rose which found Planned Parenthood clinics willing to accept donations from people who wanted African American babies aborted. A separate New York Times report on January 28 characterized the investigation as “prank calls” to Planned Parenthood.

Four reports referred to state funding of Planned Parenthood, but did not mention federal resources granted to the organization.

Planned Parenthood’s 2008 Annual Report says $349.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts accounted for more than a third (36 percent) of the organization’s income that year, second only to health center revenue. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood has increased by 45 percent since 2001-2002, when it received a reported $240.9 million from taxpayers.

While federal orders mandate that government money not be used directly for abortions, pro-life advocates point out that federal money used to cover non-abortion costs frees up private money to pay for abortions.

“Frees it up.”

Favorite Experts

Planned Parenthood is by far the most cited pro-abortion group when it comes to national media coverage. In the last six months, 30 broadcast and print reports have quoted Planned Parenthood representatives and another 26 have mentioned the organization.

The 56 mentions of Planned Parenthood dwarf other pro-abortion groups, including the National Organization for Women (30) and NARAL Pro-Choice America (15).

When abortion was a major focus of health care reform debates, the media turned to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other affiliated representatives to statements and analysis. When the media celebrated the 50th anniversary of “the Pill,” the media commemorated Planned Parenthood’s role in making it possible.

A February 26 profile in The Washington Post painted a glowing picture of abortion doctor Carol Ball. The article described a “difficult time” for Ball and other doctors who perform late term abortions in South Dakota.

When Planned Parenthood produced an ad in response to Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, the media praised it. USA Today noted it “defend[ed] abortion rights,” although the Focus on the Family ad did not target abortion “rights.”

The New York Times on January 27 turned to Richards on the increase in teen pregnancy rates, and she used the opportunity bash abstinence education. “This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work,” Richards said.

In addition to news reports related to Planned Parenthood, newspapers published five letters to the editor from readers mentioning the organization and fives letters to the editor from Planned Parenthood executives.

Another seven op-eds and entertainment reviews mentioned Planned Parenthood, as well as 15 death notices, and a couple of comedians’ jokes. All told, the networks and newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood more than 80 times in the last six months.

But when someone noticed a $1.3 billion discrepancy in Planned Parenthood’s handling of federal money – crickets.

See what I mean about the mainstream media?

The Sound of Silence

One letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times February 7 illustrated the effect the media blackout has had on public perceptions of Planned Parenthood.

Responding to the media-manufactured controversy over Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, a reader wrote, “If I had it, I would give millions to Planned Parenthood to advertise on CBS during the Super Bowl.”

Well, dear reader, your wish has already come true. You might not know it from reading the Times, but Planned Parenthood already receives more than $350 million every year from you and every other American taxpayer, with no oversight from the “watchdogs” in the media.

$350 million every year!!!!

Of yours and my tax dollars, monies we could find much better uses for than having a bunch of “progressive” politicians give it to Planned Parenthood.

More than enough in any reasonable man’s book to justify giving every politician involved his or her just desserts.

…make even the French (Spit!) look respectable. The cottage industry those parasites sleazed upon us a few years ago, that of victimizing the innocent in order to make a few bucks even less honestly than con men practicing the Bible scam does nothing more than make it impossible for many companies and individuals to protect their homes, families, merchandise and possessions.

What these scumbags (and this particular brand of lawyer should take the term “scumbag” as a compliment as he/she stuffs his/her maggot-ridden pockets with the lucre stolen from honest citizens) don’t give a damn about is decency, morality or any other quality that requires a soul.

They sue the innocent on behalf of other human feces who, like them, are nothing more than opportunists who are too lazy to try and earn a living like anybody else.

Here, we have a prime example of a couple of people losing their jobs because their employers’ attorneys advised them, rightly, that the flotsam known as a liberal trial lawyer is always waiting in the wings to transform a victim into a victimizer and make a victimizer into a victim.

Here’s the story.

Two retail employees say they were fired last week after they chased down a suspected shoplifter.

Wait: The tale gets even loopier. The men – Paul Shoemaker and Mike McGee – apparently were on their break and chasing an alleged store shoplifter not in their store, but in an adjacent Apple Store.

The pair were heading out of the Sprint store where they used to work in Denver’s Cherry Creek Mall when they came upon a frantic security guard in the hall. “[He] came right basically in front of us, and was like, ‘Help me, Help me.’ Out of breath. You could totally hear he was distraught,” Shoemaker told Denver’s 7News.

The pair pitched in to help capture the alleged shoplifter.

“It’s the way I was raised as a kid,” McGee said. “You see something that’s going on wrong you step in and try to help whatever way you can.”

In other words, the young man simply wanted to do the right thing, like any decent person. So…

The trouble started after the suspect was carted off. Sprint’s corporate policy states that employees should not chase shoplifters, though the men argue they were on break and it wasn’t even Sprint’s merchandise they were seeking to retrieve. Sprint declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.

The firing isn’t without precedent. In October Walmart fired an Ocala branch’s loss prevention officer for chasing a man allegedly trying to steal golf balls. And in August 2009, two college-age Best Buy employees were fired from a Broomfield, Colorado Best Buy after tackling an alleged shoplifter. A Best Buy spokeswoman said all employees “are aware, and trained, on the standard operating procedures for dealing with shoplifting or theft – which includes ceasing pursuit of a suspected shoplifter once they exit the store.” This, she said, was for the safety of employees.

So should you fire an employee for pursuing a thief? Only you can decide the “should,” but legally you are able to do so.

Employment lawyer Frank Steinberg blogged about the Walmart case that the chain “was clearly within its rights to set a policy on how shoplifting incidents were to be handled and to decide that the guard’s violation of that policy warranted termination.”

In fact, having a policy about how employees should handle shoplifting or any crime they witness on the job is seen as a smart move legally, because it can protect you from liability in the event someone is hurt. Judgments in these cases are rare, but can reach into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

In Texas, for example, a shoplifter – his lawyer says he admits to the crime – is suing Walmart for $100,000 over the dislocated shoulder he claims employees inflicted on him.
Separately, the Houston Chronicle reported the company paid nearly $750,000 as part of a settlement to the family of a 30-year-old alleged shoplifter who died of a heart attack as employees tried to stop him. (The items he was accused of stealing: a package of diapers, a pair of sunglasses, a BB gun, and a package of BBs.)

Whether the good Samaritans in Denver deserved to be terminated is another question; how you train your staff to handle loss prevention is one of those tricky matters you probably never considered when you first started your business.

These two people were on break, which means they were on their own time, yet companies have become so paranoid about lawsuits that this didn’t matter to Sprint.

However, while the excuse used was that their concern was the safety of the two employees, face it: The larger worry was a lawsuit by the criminal. That’s right, criminal, the perpetrator of the crime of shoplifting.

I have seen this before. Security chases a thief out the door and the dirtbag runs into traffic attempting to escape, gets hit by a car, and it’s no longer his fault that he was running in the commission of a crime, because some derriere creeping, toilet cake liberal trial lawyer turns things around and makes it the pursuers’, and therefore their employers’ fault, that the anal cavity ran out into traffic.

Look at the other examples in the linked article.

In Texas, for example, a shoplifter – his lawyer says he admits to the crime – is suing Walmart for $100,000 over the dislocated shoulder he claims employees inflicted on him.

Separately, the Houston Chronicle reported the company paid nearly $750,000 as part of a settlement to the family of a 30-year-old alleged shoplifter who died of a heart attack as employees tried to stop him. (The items he was accused of stealing: a package of diapers, a pair of sunglasses, a BB gun, and a package of BBs.)

Whose fault was either the dislocated shoulder or the heart attack?

The employess were simply, as the late Louis L’Amour used to say, “riding for the brand”, trying to recover their employers’ merchandise, so the business wouldn’t have to take a loss on something it had paid for.

Shrinkage control, or loss prevention, is an integral part of running any business where there is any sort of inventory involved, whether it’s equipment for performing services or it’s merchandise.

In the course of my own consulting work, I’ve had to counsel clients along the same lines their attorneys have had to — advising them to incorporate the same policies of non-pursuit (except in the case of clients wherein security officers have such concerns as national security or certain kinds of public safety issues that will protect them in instances of litigation) while silently cursing those walking, talking used prophylactics who dare think of themselves as anything other than the thin film of scum that floats atop the cesspool of humanity. Unfortunately, coaching clients in the avoidance of fraudulent, frivolous or overstated lawsuits is often part of my job.

In my opinion, sustaining crime related injuries, whether superficial, disabling or fatal, should be written off as “If you mess around with the bandwagon, you have to expect to get hit with the horn. Live with it.”

Some divorce lawyers (that’s a brand of lawyer who milks his lucre out of another kind of misery) are as septic tank qualified as the ones described above. I’ve never had any truck with any of those critters, but one day last year, as I was strolling by a divorce lawyers’ office in Santa Monica, an older lawyer walked out with a younger one, and he was telling the rookie, “You’re gonna call the broad, and you’re gonna kiss her ass. Promise her anything you have to, the pension…” and then they were too far away to hear any more.

These turds should be taken out and either boiled or drowned very slowly on national television…

We hear more and more about the pushing of the Value Added Tax by the kommies in our midst, who thing every working (or spending) American is a mere cash sponge to be wrung out without mercy in order to finance the ever-increasing monetary demands of a socialist country.

Recently, progressives have made noise about introducing a value-added tax (VAT) in the United States. The VAT is an indirect tax — that is, Americans wouldn’t pay the tax directly to government, but would pay it to businesses as part of the retail price of things we buy, and businesses would then remit the tax to Uncle Sam.

A VAT is set at a fixed rate — say, 10 or 15 percent — added to the price of a good at every step of production, with a deduction allowed for the amount of VAT paid during earlier stages of production. The more steps there are in transforming raw materials into complex consumer goods, the higher the resulting consumer price as a result of those multiple layers of taxation.

Many countries have VATs, including Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. One might say that a VAT is an emblem signifying that a country’s government consumes a large percentage of its GDP, for VATs seem to go hand-in-hand with big-budget nanny states.

The reason for this phenomenon is simple: Any government that seeks to be all things to all people, and therefore seeks to spend ubiquitously, must inevitably seek to tax ubiquitously. Such governments have insatiable appetites for revenue. Because VATs are cash cows, diverting huge sums of money from consumers to government, they are favorites of big-spending governments.

Unfortunately, though, VATs have significant negative economic consequences.

Because they inflate consumer prices, quantities demanded fall. Most often, the marginal buyers who can no longer afford to pay the higher price are poorer citizens. When government policy raises
prices, the first victims are poor people.

The second victims of a VAT are the workers who will lose their jobs as a result of falling demand for the newly higher-priced goods.

Many affluent Americans may not curtail their consumption, but because more of their money is diverted to the government treasury, their savings must correspondingly decline. This results in decreased capital accumulation, which, in turn, slows business expansion, development, and formation. It also slows the growth rate of labor productivity, hence retarding economic progress for workers.

Read on.

These leftists, who have no respect for the Constitution nor for the intentions of our founding fathers, and who certainly despise the very principles that define the United States of America, would love to watch our nation come apart, sinking into an abyss of socialism…

…and as a bit of lagniappe, let’s finish with an excellent and unrelated column by Wesley Pruden.

…I was watching Obama Hatchetwoman Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius give her spiel on C-Span this morning and was struck by the wideness of the spectrum encompassed by Obama’s “Health” Care program.

Unsurprisingly, the thin lipped, angular featured (I don’t want to make disparaging remarks about anyone’s appearance, but she did kinda’ sorta remind me of a hatchet, come to think of it) cabinet member managed to incorporate education, “acceptable” foods, corporate salaries and a few other items in there that I simply couldn’t relate to health care, per se, but maybe that was just me.

My own impression was that she was laying the groundwork for the mega-agenda distribution of the soon-to-be voluminously increased taxes we will behold as the Obama Administration and its Pelosi led, Congressional marxist contingent do their unconstitutional best, under the blanket misnomer of “health care”, to strip us of our liberty and as much of our hard earned money as they possibly can.