The Happy to pay more taxes crowd is at it again.....

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.

Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.

Sen. "Do As I Say Not As I Do" Kerry, who campaigned on the fact that the rich needed to "pay their fair share" ducking taxes?  Say it isn't so......

Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven - like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau - for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners?

Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

Sigh....why am I not surprised.....

George Phillips is the GOP endorsed candidate for Congress in New York’s 22 Congressional District.  Today's Binghamton Press carried an Op-Ed from Mr. Phillips on the subject of Illegal Immigration and Arizona’s SB1070.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to come from the simple act of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signing her state's new immigration legislation into law was the beginning of a much-needed, long overdue national discussion on the subject of border security.
There were understandable concerns raised when SB1070 was passed. Questions were raised about the possibility of racial profiling and police being put in a potentially untenable position when enforcing the law. But Arizona 's governor quickly moved to sign HB2162, which clarified troubling aspects of the legislation.

What we were left with was, in fact, a law which closely mimics existing federal immigration regulations. This brings us to the question of whether or not the states, as opposed to the federal government, should be engaged in the enforcement of border security. It's an important issue and a debate that we should explore fully. But it still fails to address the underlying crisis that brought us to this point.

Arizona and our other border states have been asking for help for years now, but Washington has failed to address this very real threat in any meaningful way.

In Saturdays post I linked to this article about the GAO report to Congress on Illegal Immigration.  The article, early on, goes into a subject that is one that turned me against the status quo before I left Minnesota....Human  trafficking.

The U.S-Mexican human smuggling business generates billions, but ICE agents have never managed to seize more than $17 million a year in smugglers' assets, Richard M. Stana, director of the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice Issues office, told the committee. He called those results "tepid."

A decade ago, 90 percent of Mexicans and other would-be illegal migrants crossed into the U.S. without using so-called coyotes, Stana said. But with a new wall and twice as many border agents, they increasingly use professional smugglers. That has meant higher prices charged by the smugglers, which attracted organized crime gangs to a business once dominated by less-violent operations rooted in migrant communities.

On the Texas border, the Zetas, the vicious former enforcers of the Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization, have branched into the human smuggling trade.

Politics In Minnesota's Charley Shaw has his latest Legislative race update posted and it seems he has noticed something rather nefarious in this years class of candidates....

Traditionally, there have been a number of more or less well-worn paths to the Minnesota Legislature. They include backgrounds in local government, business, and partisan political activism. Each, in its own way, has tended to breed familiarity with the levers of government and how they operate.

That’s still true of many in the current batch of St. Paul aspirants. But the nationwide backlash against economic stimulus measures and the national debt has spawned a new type of candidate in 2010. In a number of House and Senate districts, political newcomers enamored with the Tea Party movement are running for office mainly because they object to the policies of President Barack Obama and his fellow travelers at the state and local level.

OH NO - not the Tea "baggers".....can you imagine the kind of freaks are they running?

The NEW Senate Site has a post up that is must reading (actually you really should be following them anyway - it's a wealth of information).  The post is by Senator (and Ogden City Police Chief) John Greiner and it confirms what many have long suspected.....

For those interested in the immigration discussion, here is a report from one of my team leaders on the Weber/Morgan Narcotics Strike Force.  Joe Pyrah used some of these stats in  Police: Illegals responsible for much of drug trade

From: Burnett, Troy
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 2:45 PM
Subject: Illegal Alien effect on Drug Crime in Weber and Morgan Counties

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of discussion and debate over the new law in Arizona dealing with illegal aliens. Locally, there has been debate over the effects of such a law in Utah. Salt Lake City Police Chief Burbank is an outspoken opponent to such a law with Representative Carl Wimmer being a vocal proponent. See http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10598798.

The Strike Force would like to supply you with facts as it relates to Illegal aliens and the drug activity in Weber and Morgan Counties.

This week, Rep. Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley ) declared war on one of Minnesota 's major employers.  My friend Gary Gross has the details.  The tweet that shows just how ill informed the gentleman from Golden Valley is was this one....

Target earned Rep. Winkler's ire by daring to donate money to a newly formed center right activist group named MN Forward.  Rep. Winkler says that "MN political spending is new".  WRONG REP. WINKLER.  A quick visit to Target's corporate website shows that political giving is not "new"....nor is MN political spending new.  In fact Target Corporation has been giving to right and left of center activist groups AND political parties for YEARS...including but not limited to:

Governor Tim Pawlenty has an op-ed in Politico that certainly has people talking.  And talk they should for the governor is sounding the same kind of "common sense" solutions to the current fiscal crisis that most average Americans are already practicing...and expect their government to practice.

Later this week, the White House budget office is due to produce its midyear report on the nation’s fiscal health.

If history is any guide, the administration will try to paint a rosy picture, but the truth is already obvious: Washington under President Barack Obama is not just broken — it’s broke.

When Obama entered office, he inherited a budget deficit that reflected the toxic combination of recession, bailouts and runaway entitlement programs. But rather than getting the government’s finances under control, Obama and his allies in Congress poured gasoline on the fire with trillion-dollar boondoggles.

To put the recent spending binge in context, consider this: At the end of 2008, just before Obama took office, the federal debt was about 40 percent of our nation’s total economy. Now, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office report, the debt will explode to 62 percent of our economy by the end of this year.

If we consider off-budget liabilities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, underfunded entitlement promises and the budget effects embedded in the Democrats’ new health care bill, the fiscal picture gets even worse.

The growing federal debt is no doubt spurring a lot of the stagnation in the economy.  With the average American on the hook for a staggering $42,000 plus, the American people understand that ultimately THEY are the ones that are going to pay for this in the form of taxes.  As a result they have quit spending on extravagances and are even cutting back on necessities as government continues to dog pile on new taxes, fees, tolls and tariffs.

Governor Pawlenty then hits the Democrats in Congress for their failure to even propose a budget.

Long time readers know that one of my frustrations with politics today is the media.  Folks on the right say that there is a left wing media bias and those on the left claim that there is a right wing bias, but it is honestly bigger than that.  Truthfully, a better descriptor is the "Agenda driven media" a term coined by the left's favorite pundit to hate - Glenn Beck.  However, Beck is absolutely correct in this assessment.  You don't need to go any further than to look at the "big" stories over the last week.  You had all the networks (not just ESPN) reporting in breathless anticipation about where LeBron was going to play ball next year...when they weren't talking about Lindsay Lohan's expletive painted fingertips and histrionics in the courtroom.  Meanwhile they were ignoring stories about the continued bungling by BP and the Administration in the Gulf of Mexico (we are on day 82 in case you were counting), the UN's stony silence on Iran's stoning sentence that was passed on Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for the crime of adultery (Iran IS after all a seated member of the UN's Commission on Women's Rights after all), slumping employment rates, a stagnant economy, the DOJ's lawsuit against Arizona and growing allegations of voter fraud in the 2008 election.  Even the Junior Logician (who is neck deep in typical teen-aged activities like sports, theater and friends) noticed.

The media has a bad habit of either over hyping things, reporting on something we could careless (sic) about, giving a biased opinion on a story, or making a story without anything to back it up aka Gossip. We might as well be back in high school and talk about what this girl was wearing and how it was out of style and how this guy is dating this girl after he dumped this other girl yesterday I mean come on people really???

The latest meme is that Afghanistan has become the longest war in US History - a dubious honor once bestowed upon the VietNam war.  Yet those with no sense of history forget that there is one other ongoing war that predates both VietNam and Afghanistan.

On June 25, 1950, 90,000 North Korean soldiers backed by 150 Soviet-built T-34 tanks poured across the border into South Korea. The Cold War had suddenly turned hot, and America found itself drawn into the longest war in its history.

Vietnam used to claim that dubious title. Now it's Afghanistan. But the surprise communist invasion 60 years ago today began a Korean war that eventually saw an armistice but still no peace treaty.

That is correct - though major combat has not taken place since 1953, the US is STILL at war with North Korea.  All one needs to do is check out the military "rules" that surround a tour in Korea.  Korean tours along the DMZ are limited to 18 months and include combat pay.  Families are strictly prohibited from joining a soldier on his tour in Korea unless he is stationed in Seoul. 

Korea is, by all definitions, still an active war zone.  Something that today's media elite don't want you to remember.  It simply does not fit into their preset storyline.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Carroon has a web ad up that is must see viewing for all residents of Utah.

His choice of words is amusing at best - pathetic at worst....

Corroon, who will face Herbert in November's special gubernatorial election, said Herbert relied on "rosy projections" and "fuzzy math" to balance the state budget.

...when you consider that Utah has long been considered one of the best run states in the country.  But then again, why let something as simple as FACT get in the way of a good attack ad.  And speaking of train wrecks, let's take a look at the Salt Lake County budget.  Let's not forget that Salt Lake County's budget is so bad right now, they had to institute a new tax on the people of the county in order to provide the most basic of services....POLICE!  You see, like their counterparts in Minneapolis (who fund police out of volatile Local Government Aid), Salt Lake County uses sales tax money to fund the police instead of using a steady financial stream (property taxes) to fund the department.  So in order to avoid "increasing" property taxes, the County introduced a new "fee" on only certain parts of the county in order to pay for the luxury of police protection.  They didn't look at CUTTING anything - oh heavens no!  Why cut, when you can increase taxes on the incredibly wealthy people who live in townships like Magna whose per capital income is a princely $14,355 a year.  Meanwhile, as we speak the county has sanitation workers (whose average income is $35,000 a year) earning double time collecting garbage in the same community on a federal and state holiday(July 4th)!  But no, there is NOTHING we can cut.....

Paul at Powerline has an interesting post up about the Democrats ongoing campaign woes this year.

Politico reports that Democrats are encountering a brutal fundraising period in their longtime donor stronghold of mega-rich New York. The exact quarterly figures won't be known until after the July 15 filing deadline, but some Democratic campaign insiders are calling this the worst period for fundraising they've experienced in the New York area since 1994 (there's that year again).

It isn't difficult to figure out what the problems are. They include non-stop bashing of Wall Street by the administration; the substantial loss of wealth among donors caused by the recession; demoralization among Democrats caused by the party's loss of popularity and to some extent by disillusionment with the performance of Obama and Congress, the president's arrogance, which prevents him from mingling much with wealthy donors; and the administration's anti-Israeli posture.

The title of the post "Ideas Have Consequences and So Do Attitudes" is exactly what the Democrats are experiencing.  The consequences of their actions and attitudes are going to culminate in a really rough mid-term election.  Poll after poll after poll have already indicated that 2010 is going to be challenging for Democrats of all stripes.

Paul admits the obvious - lack of money does not automatically mean a loss, but he indicates that the dis-satisfaction with Democrats is moving into circles that have been LONG time bastions of support - namely New York.

Ed Driscoll has a great post up today (HT HotAir) with a collections of thoughts for the 4th of July.  He starts off in California where after 9 years, someone deemed an American Flag to be "graffiti" that needed to be painted over.....

Like many states with large urban areas, California has a bit of a graffiti problem. Drive past a railroad yard, an industrial park, a bridge or an overpass, and the odds are very good that you’ll the spray-painted markings from a would-be artist’s latest quest for immortality. And given the slow rate that this stuff seems to get cleaned up, if ever, he may have stumbled over the perfect medium to achieve it.

Fortunately, California is getting serious about the issue:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is apologizing for a decision by state transportation officials to paint over a giant American flag mural on the side of a Northern California freeway.The 35-foot long flag was painted on a concrete slab near Interstate 680 in Sunol by three men about two weeks after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Even though the mural had been in clear view of commuters for nearly nine years, a Caltrans spokesman says it wasn’t until last month that someone in the agency asked if the flag was on state property.

and went on to the disappearance of American exceptionalism and idealism...

Sacramento have created the perfect metaphor for this Fourth of July weekend, which certainly feels a bit gloomier than some. (How bad is it? Even Canada’s feeling a bit sorry for us today!) Or as Minority Leader John Boehner said of the Democrats and the president, “They’re snuffing out the America that I grew up in,” causing Rick Moran to add:

The congressman is not referring to the grand plans of statesmen and social engineers, or the yardsticks of social progress that so enamor the left. Boehner was referring to a state of mind about America that is disappearing.What else is America except a place that has lived in the dreams of men since we organized ourselves into nation-states? Each of us alone defines our own America, imbuing it with our own hopes, animating it with our own definitions of liberty, consecrating it by our embrace of its traditions and values. It is this feeling about America that Boehner believes is threatened. But is he right? Is his implication that the growth of government under the current administration — the largest expansion in history — can destroy what we “grew up with” as a vision of America in our minds?

There are other things we grew up with in America — those of us of Boehner’s age and a little younger — and not all of them bring pleasant memories to the surface. In fact, a significant number of them we wanted “snuffed out.” Certainly, the casual kind of racism and intolerance that was not unfamiliar in the America of my own youth should have been snuffed out. The second-class citizenship accorded women (cemented in both tradition and the law) needed to be left behind, as did attitudes toward gays, the handicapped, the mentally ill, and others in society who lived on the margins, largely invisible to the majority of us, and who suffered in silence until their concerns were given voice a decade or two later.

Economist Paul Rubin asks, and attempts to answer, the question that is on everyone's mind on Day 74 of the Gulf Oil Crisis...WHY is the Gulf clean up taking so long?

As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.

First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

That can not be stressed enough - this is NOT a normal time.  Extraordinary measures need to be taken and bureaucracy simply can not handle extraordinary.....

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

Something President Obama could do with the swipe of a pen.

Don't forget - tomorrow is Troopathon.  The broadcast is from 2pm to 10pm Mountain Standard Time and you can watch it online.  Guests include Dennis Miller, Laura Ingraham, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Mancow Muller (if you have not heard Mancow you are missing one funny dude) and Rush Limbaugh.  Put politics aside and help our men and women in uniform by contributing please?

I've stayed out of the whole "birther" debate in large part because I feel that it is an issue that does no one any good.  However, Paul Rolly's column today drew me in.  For you see, in today's column he showed the depths of his Constitutional knowledge.....

To all you birthers who will not accept President Barack Obama’s birth certificate placed online, or the Hawaii health officials and governor who all have confirmed the president was born in Hawaii and not Kenya, if you happen to be a Republican, you have a legislative candidate this year who subjugated his U.S. citizenship a decade ago to become a German.

Shawn Bradley, the former NBA star who grew up in Castle Dale and played for BYU, was born in 1972 in Germany while his father served in the U.S. military there.