100 IRS employees caught using tax credit fraud

Who do they think they are, Timothy Geithner?

More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit, which was worth up to $8,000.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/23/irs-staff-committed-tax-credit-fraud/

Inconvenient Truth: SUV's Saved Chrysler

First the polar bears are doing great, and now news that
SUV's are selling like hotcakes--Al Gore is NOT having a good day.


Chrysler and the White House will celebrate the Detroit icon's $5.9 billion repayment of government loans Tuesday in a ceremony that will be hailed by both sides for the same reason: The government bailout had become a liability for both entities.


...it is the resurgence of America's appetite for trucks that has brought Chrysler back from the dead. Chrysler Group reported sales were up 17 percent to 1.1 million vehicles in 2010 on the strength of its wildly popular, redesigned Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs. For CEO Marchionne, the SUVs success in the U.S. market has been a revelation and he is planning to expand the SUV lineup into Europe with Alfa Romeo and Maserati-badged trucks.





http://detnews.com/article/20110524/MIVIEW/105240374/Payne--SUVs-saved-Chrysler

The 'governing class': our new overlords

The brilliant Mark Steyn on our 'governing class':

"The arrest of a mediocre international civil servant in the first-class cabin of his jet isn’t just a sex story: It’s a glimpse of the widening gulf between the government class and their subjects in a post-prosperity West. Neither Geithner nor Strauss-Kahn has ever created a dime of wealth in his life. They have devoted their careers to “public service,” and thus are in the happy position of rarely if ever having to write a personal check. At the Sofitel in New York, DSK was in a $3,000-per-night suite. Was the IMF picking up the tab? If so, you the plucky U.S. taxpayer paid around 550 bucks of that, whereas Strauss-Kahn’s fellow Frenchmen put up less than $150. So if, as Le Nouvel Observateur suggests, France and America really do belong in entirely different civilizations, the French one ought to start looking for a new patron for the heroic DSK’s lifestyle."

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267762/yes-they-kahn-mark-steyn

Share the Tax Pain

The US is spending $4 billion a day more than it is taking in.

From David Walker, former Comptroller General of the U.S.:

Walker leans more towards the spending-cut side, but also sees inequities in the tax structure that must be corrected to help generate revenue.

"We have to broaden the base—51 percent of Americans don't have any income taxes," he said. "That's not acceptable in a democracy."

Solving America's problems will require a combination weighted toward spending reductions but one that also will require spreading the taxation burden around more evenly, said Walker, the former US comptroller general.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43134077

Polar bear extinction and other Global Warming Alarmist bullshit

The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organization of scientists that has attempted to monitor the global polar bear population since the 1960s, has issued a report indicating that there was no change in the overall global polar bear population in the most recent four-year period studied.

“The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000,” the group said in a press release published together with a report on the proceedings of its 15th meeting.

20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/international-conservation-group-global

'Chicago Way' politics from a fascist White House

Marc A. Thiessen writing in the Washington Post:

"...as the president prepares to issue a far-reaching executive order that would require the government to collect detailed information about the political activities of anyone applying for a federal contract. The proposed order would require businesses to furnish, with each contract proposal, a list not only of their contributions to political candidates and committees, but also their contributions to groups that do not under current law have to reveal their donors. The president’s order would force anyone seeking a federal contract to declare whether they are a friend or an enemy — excuse me, “opponent” — of the Obama White House. Worse still, it would set up a central database listing those contributions at a federal government Web site — creating what amounts to an electronic, searchable “enemies list.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-milhous-obama/2011/05/23/AFzdYn9G_story.html

Pilot error cited in Air France crash probe

The pilots of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago apparently became distracted with faulty airspeed indicators and failed to properly deal with other vital systems, including adjusting engine thrust, according to people familiar with preliminary findings from the plane's recorders.

The final moments inside the cockpit of the twin-engine Airbus A330, these people said, indicate the pilots seemingly were confused by alarms they received from various automated flight-control systems as the plane passed through some turbulence typical on the route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. They also faced unexpectedly heavy icing at 35,000 feet. Such icing is renowned for making airspeed-indicators and other external sensors unreliable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576341631579541512.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection