North Carolina's Employee State Income Tax Fraud Scam: Job Piracy! Corporate Welfare!

Taxed by the boss


Across the United States more than 2,700 companies are collecting state income taxes from hundreds of thousands of workers – and are keeping the money with the states’ approval, says an eye-opening report published on Thursday.

The report from Good Jobs First, a nonprofit taxpayer watchdog organization funded by Ford, Surdna and other major foundations, identifies 16 states that let companies divert some or all of the state income taxes deducted from workers’ paychecks. None of the states requires notifying the workers, whose withholdings are treated as taxes they paid.

General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and AMC Theatres enjoy deals to keep state taxes deducted from their workers’ paychecks, the report shows. Foreign companies also enjoy such arrangements, including Electrolux, Nissan, Toyota and a host of Canadian, Japanese and European banks, Good Jobs First says.

Why do state governments do this? Public records show that large companies often pay little or no state income tax in states where they have large operations, as this column has documented. Some companies get discounts on property, sales and other taxes. So how to provide even more subsidies without writing a check? Simple. Let corporations keep the state income taxes deducted from their workers’ paychecks for up to 25 years.

It was not always this way. Letting companies keep their workers’ state taxes apparently began in Kentucky two decades ago as a way to retain jobs.

Last July when I wrote about six big companies that pocket Illinois state taxes I knew there was more to this. But I had no idea how pervasive these diversions were until I read an advance copy of the 39-page report by Good Jobs First.

CORPORATE SOCIALISM

Deals cut with the states over the past two decades diverted $5.5 billion from public purposes to private gain, the report says. Close to $700 million more was diverted last year, Good Jobs First estimates.

New Jersey approved $73.2 million in new deals in 2011 on top of $178 million diverted that year alone under previous deals. I calculate that at nearly $80 per household in corporate welfare based on New Jersey’s 3.1 million households.

These deals typify corporate socialism, in which business gains are privatized and costs socialized. They also mean government picks winners and losers, interfering with competitive markets. Leaders in both parties embrace these giveaways because they draw campaign donations from corporate interests and votes from people who do not understand that they are subsidizing huge companies.

Michael Press, a Connecticut consultant on tax incentives, says such deals, however troubling, are an inevitable result of the U.S. Constitution setting up competition between the states.

“In an ideal world we would not provide any corporate subsidies,” Press told me. “It looks like corruption. But if you do it right, if you only target those companies whose behavior you change to create jobs or keep jobs in your state then these targeted temporary arrangements are cheaper – much cheaper – and can be more effective than an overall reduction in tax rates.”

The mission of Good Jobs First is making economic development subsidies accountable and effective. In years of working with their data I have always found it sound. While Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First’s founder, has rooted out all sorts of hidden subsidies over the years, he emphasizes that he is not inherently hostile to them, only to secrecy, waste and what he calls job piracy and job blackmail.

“Job piracy” occurs when one state diverts taxes to lure an employer across state lines. AMC Entertainmentannounced a deal last year to move its corporate headquarters from Kansas City, Mo., to a nearby Kansas suburb. In return, Good Jobs First said, Kansas will let the multiplex chain keep $47 million of state income taxes withheld from its workers’ paychecks, a drain on public finances that did not create any jobs, but does enrich the Wall Street firms that own AMC including arms of J. P. Morgan, Apollo Management, Bain Capital and the Carlyle Group. AMC declined to answer my questions.

“Job blackmail” occurs when a company threatens to close a plant unless it gets tax money.

In Illinois, the law requires companies to threaten to leave before they can keep taxes withheld from paychecks. Motorola Mobility, now being acquired by Google; the truck maker Navistar; the German manufacturer Continental Tire, and three auto makers – Chrysler, Ford and Mitsubishi – get to keep $346.8 in taxes over 10 years because they threatened to leave Illinois. Navistar can pocket $62.1 million even if it fires a quarter of its Illinois workforce, its contract shows. A recent deal gives Sears $150 million, Good Jobs First reported.

PROMISES OF JOBS

Promising to retain jobs can be lucrative. General Electric invested $126 million updating part of its Ohio operations. In return, GE gets a tax credit equal to $115.3 million of its worker taxes, recovering 92 percent of its investment. A sweet deal for GE, but not its competitors.

Gary Sheffer, GE’s top spokesman, said the company told its workers about the deal. In all, he said, GE is investing around $300 million in Ohio and “the resulting taxes the state will receive will far exceed the tax credits provided to GE.”

That response, I think, misses the point – GE should pay its own bills without taking welfare.

Many figures in the Good Jobs First report are from disclosure reports some states make. Others come from news accounts and company announcements.

Total revenue losses are higher than the report states. First, some states hide the costs. Phil Mattera, the research director at Good Jobs First, said he lists the cost as zero for states that hide the numbers.

Good Jobs First wants to end these diversions, but failing that recommends mandatory disclosure to the workers as the first reform. I concur. It’s the first step in ending corporate welfare as we know it.


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Sources: Reuters, Youtube, Google Maps

GOP's 2012 Anti-Democracy Agenda: Conservative Maximalism

Biblical Or Conservative Maximalism:

An attempt by so-called "Conservative" Christians to portray the World as a Bi-polar argument, of which only one side is correct.

Examination of the so-called "Liberal/Secular" views in detail shows many differences of opinion, clearly demonstrating that to portray biblical scholarship in such "Us" against "Them" terms reflects a particular Sectarian point of view, not supported by the evidence.






The GOP vs. Democracy


Washington assumes both parties deserve blame for our problems. But the true fault lies with the GOP and its Maximalist demands.

It’s about time the Democrats started saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now—that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy. Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin made the point in a press conference in the Capitol Thursday.

Noting that his GOP colleagues are coming out against business tax cuts (read that again: Republicans against tax cuts for businesses) that Democrats happen to support, Schumer said, “It almost makes you wonder if they aren't trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.” Well, not almost. Certainly. And I don’t “wonder.” I think it’s obvious. But this is a start.

Washington is a city of conspiracies, but far and away the most pernicious one is the fiction, in which one must participate if one wants to be regarded as a “serious” person, that both parties are more or less equally to blame for the present malfunctioning of our democracy. One hears this all the time at the sort of panels, dinners, and seminars I attend. The topic is our energy future, our fiscal prospects, whatever. Discussion turns to obvious remedies, which inevitably involve the government taking some minimal amount of action, or the investment of a few modest public shekels.

The symposiast will then note, sighing forlornly, that we appear to be light years away from consummating even these modest actions. He will then bemoan a vague “lack of political will” or “absence of leadership” as the reason for the inertia.

Nonsense. There’s nothing vague about it. It’s crystal clear. We can’t do these things because of the extreme nature of the Republican Party and the right-wing noise machine that enforces such rigid ideological purity.



Period and end of story. I think most people at these panels and dinners know this deep down. But it’s thought impolite to say it. Often it’s a technical violation of law to say it, since most of these events are sponsored by nonprofit organizations that must be scrupulous about their nonpartisanship to keep the taxman at bay. Whatever the reason, the conspiracy has produced a culture that refuses to acknowledge one of its fundamental truths.

A couple of weeks ago I went to an event devoted to infrastructure. Discussion focused on the infrastructure bank proposal of John Kerry. It would seek a modest $10 billion up front for a series of public-private projects that the vast majority of experts agree have been neglected and are desperately needed in this country, as China and Brazil and so many other countries are spending many billions on their transportation and freight systems.

But sadly, it’s very difficult to imagine it becoming reality. Why? Not, as Kerry said at the event, the special interests. Oh, they play their role, no question of that. But we can’t have an infrastructure bank because it’s a Democratic idea—and an Obama idea (which it isn’t, technically, but never mind). It is therefore socialism, fascism, and all the rest. The GOP will oppose it en bloc.

There do exist a few well-meaning Republicans. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, for example, is co-sponsoring Kerry’s legislation. Good for her. However: If this bank ever gets close to passage, just watch the noise machine (Fox, talk radio, the blogs, etc.) rev into gear. Republicans will dash away from it as from leprosy. As it happens, Hutchison is retiring, so a) she no longer has to be taken that seriously by her caucus and b) it’s no skin off her nose now, since she’ll not be confronting the voters of Texas again.

So she’ll probably stick with this idea. But we have seen many instances of previously fair-minded Republicans being perp-walked through the noise machine and Tea Party rage and emerging the way Iowa Senator Charles Grassley did in the summer of 2009, when he went from negotiating the health-care bill in reasonably good faith to suddenly tweeting about pulling the plug on grandma.

A common form that the conspiracy takes is the aggrieved call for a third party to rescue us. A couple of weeks ago, David Brooks wrote a column lamenting our lack of Hamiltonian national greatness and listed four policies that would constitute it. As Ezra Klein showed, most of those policies are supported by a guy named Obama.

This week, Tom Friedman, whose efforts to alert readers and policy makers to our coming environmental disaster I admire, wrote that we need a third party that will do five things:

1.) Pass a short-term stimulus
2.) Enact Bowles-Simpson
3.) Shrink our presence in Afghanistan
4.) Raise mileage standards
5.) Pass a gas tax

So let’s see. There’s no question that the Democrats would do 1 if they could, and little doubt that they’d do 5 as part of a comprehensive energy-future bill. They already did 4, in 2007, and in fact demonstrated their commitment to the goal by taking the rare step of removing the long-time committee chairman who opposed it. Obama is now doing number 3—haltingly, but on the promised schedule. On Bowles-Simpson, it’s certainly true that many Democrats would hesitate to implement portions of it, especially some of the entitlements recommendations. The Democrats have their own sacred cows, which sometimes get in the way of action.

But most of Friedman’s agenda is impossible not because we lack a third party, but because of the GOP and the noise machine. They won’t permit 1 or 5 under any circumstances. They never lifted a finger to do 4 while they ran Congress. And while liberal Democrats dislike and would fight some parts of Bowles-Simpson, conservative opposition to it is implacable because the commission wants to raise revenues.

Today’s GOP is about ideological maximalism on all fronts. Eric Cantor’s withdrawal from the Biden talks shows it again. They cannot negotiate, because negotiating means accepting something you don’t like, which the noise machine will not permit. And worse, because the noise machine wants Obama to fail and is so powerful, Republican office-holders inevitably arrive at that point too.

Mitch McConnell in essence admitted Wednesday that Republicans were opposing Obama on Libya for partisan reasons. They can’t be quite so brazen about the economy, so they hide their political motives behind rhetoric about the deficit. It’s high time the Democrats started pulling back the curtain.

Sources: Daily Beast, NY Times, Washington Post, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

GOP Vows To Block Democrats' Legislative Social "Wish List"

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U.S. Senate GOP Pledges To Block All Bills Until Tax Dispute Resolved


U.S. Senate Republicans promised Wednesday to block legislative action on every issue being considered by the lame-duck Congress until the dispute over extending the Bush-era tax cuts is resolved and an extension of current government funding is approved.

All 42 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, vowing to prevent a vote on "any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers."

"With little time left in this congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike," the letter said.

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted by former President George W. Bush will expire after December 31 if Congress fails to reach an agreement on their extension. Top Democrats and Republicans disagree sharply over whether the current tax rates should be extended just for families earning $250,000 or under per year or for everyone regardless of income.

Republicans contend that a failure to extend all of the tax cuts would hamper an already-sluggish economy. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders argue that the roughly $700 billion price tag attached to an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would be fiscally irresponsible.

White House and congressional tax negotiators began deliberations Wednesday morning. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner characterized the initial talks as "very civil" and said that while everything was discussed, there were no surprises.

House Democrats, meanwhile, announced their intention to move forward with a vote Thursday to permanently extend the breaks only for families earning $250,000 or less.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, called the move necessary to show "our position very clearly that Democrats support tax cuts for the middle class."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, called it a "non-starter" and "political chicanery" that threatened to undermine the talks.

On the spending side, a continuing resolution responsible for funding the government is scheduled to expire Friday.

Democrats are trying to pass several pieces of legislation before a more Republican Congress is sworn in in January, including the START nuclear arms treaty with Russia, a repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and the so-called DREAM Act, which would create a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants.

Reid blasted the GOP letter on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, calling it part of a "cynical" and transparent" Republican strategy to "obstruct" and "delay" legislative progress while blaming the Democrats for failing to effectively govern.

"Last month, the American people issued their verdict on the Democrat's priorities," replied Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. "We need to show the American people that we care more about them and their ability to pay their bills than we do about the special interests' legislative Christmas-list."


Sources: CNN, Fox News, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Signs Executive Order To Control Churches & Faith-Based Organizations

Obama Signs Order To Reform Faith-Based Office


President Obama signed an executive order Wednesday (Nov. 17) that reforms the White House's Faith-based office in a bid to improve transparency and clarify rules for Religious groups that receive federal grants.

The nine-page order reflects numerous recommendations made more than six months ago by a blue-ribbon advisory council charged with streamlining and reforming the office created under former President George W. Bush.

"The recommendations that they've put forth make really concrete and tangible improvements to the government's relationship with faith-based organizations," said Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The executive order, however, does not address controversial questions of whether grant recipients can hire and fire based on religion. Administration officials have said those questions will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

DuBois and others said the new order gives better legal footing to public-private partnerships. "It ... clarifies that decisions about financial awards must be free from political interference or the appearance thereof," DuBois said.

In particular, the order reflects the council's special concern about the treatment of people who receive social services from a religious group receiving federal funding.

"The government has a responsibility to give a referral to a nonreligious program if the beneficiary objects to the religious program they're in," DuBois said in explaining the order.

Melissa Rogers, who chaired the advisory council, said the order both continues and changes the work begun under Bush. For example, grant recipients may continue offering services in buildings containing religious symbols, but will be required to provide beneficiaries with written information about their rights.

"In the case of Social Service beneficiaries, that's been a real worry for many of us, that they might not know what their rights are," Rogers said.

Responding to recommendations for greater transparency, the order calls for agencies to post rules affecting religious organizations online, as well as lists of federal grant recipients.

Rogers said such steps may dispel notions there is a "pot of gold" waiting solely for religious groups that apply for grants.

"By having all this easily accessible, it heightens the chances that we'll be able to demystify the process and watch the process," she said.

Obama's order implements most of the dozen reform recommendations crafted by the council's task force on internal reform, which included a former Bush administration staffer and church-state separationists.

With the new order in place, DuBois said "well over half" of the council's total 64 recommendations -- on topics ranging from poverty to interfaith relations -- will have been implemented.

Other council members, who represent both conservative and liberal religious organizations, said they were pleased with the order.

"President Obama has advanced America's social welfare sector and protected constitutional principles," said Nathan Diament, the top Washington lobbyist for Orthodox Jewish congregations.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said the new rules will "set the faith-based initiative on far firmer constitutional ground, and give much broader protections to both religious institutions and the beneficiaries than they've had so far."

The order calls for a new Interagency working group that will issue Guidance to Federal agencies within 120 days.

DuBois said new members of an advisory council, who will succeed the group that finished its work in March, will be announced "as soon as possible."


Sources: Huffington Post

Obama "Spreads The Wealth" In New Health Care Law

In Health Care Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality


For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would “mark a new season in America.” He added, “We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill — and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

Much about health reform remains unknown. Maybe it will deliver Congress to the Republicans this fall, or maybe it will help the Democrats keep power. Maybe the bill’s attempts to hold down the recent growth of medical costs will prove a big success, or maybe the results will be modest and inadequate. But the ways in which the bill attacks the inequality of the Reagan era — whether you love them or hate them — will probably be around for a long time.

“Legislative majorities come and go,” David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, lamented on Sunday. “This health care bill is forever.”

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign in 2007, he has had a complicated relationship with the Reagan legacy. He has been more willing than many other Democrats to praise President Reagan. “Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic,” Mr. Obama wrote in his second book, “contained a good deal of truth.” Most notably, he praised Mr. Reagan as a president who “changed the trajectory of America.”

But Mr. Obama also argued that the Reagan administration had gone too far, and that if elected, he would try to put the country on a new trajectory. “The project of the next president,” he said in an interview during the campaign, “is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth.”

Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.

For most of the last three decades, tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly. Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile — about $300,000 today — real pay has roughly doubled.

The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies — tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net — have contributed to them.

Health reform hardly solves all of the American economy’s problems. Economic growth over the last decade was slower than in any decade since World War II. The tax cuts of the last 30 years, the two current wars, the Great Recession, the stimulus program and the looming retirement of the baby boomers have created huge deficits. Educational gains have slowed, and the planet is getting hotter.

Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer — what is the proper balance between the market and the government? — remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.

Before he became Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare — and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.

Now there is.


Sources: NY Times, Fox News, NY Mag., Pop Modal, Youtube

Health Care Bill Win Saves Obama's Presidential Legacy Or No?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Left's Fleeting Wins



Health-care reform is the signal liberal achievement of Obama’s presidency. Will it be his last?

The long, exhausting march to health-care reform should remind us of a truth that ideologues on the right and left tend to ignore: Every liberal moment in modern American political history has been both hard-won and brief. Progressive Democrats came to power with Woodrow Wilson in 1913. They quickly passed a tough antitrust law, created the Federal Reserve System, allied with organized labor—and lost their congressional majority five years later.

FDR won four straight presidential elections, but New Dealers no longer controlled Congress after the disastrous midterms of 1938. LBJ was wise to hurry lawmakers to enact his Great Society programs in the two years following JFK’s assassination. By 1966, the war in Vietnam and ghetto riots at home had given conservatives the upper hand—an advantage they have exploited ever since.

The passage of health-care reform is the signal liberal achievement of Obama’s presidency—and may also be the last. But the president and his allies in Congress can also take heart from another historical parallel. In those earlier liberal moments, the policies Democrats were able to enact—from financial regulation and Social Security to civil rights and Medicare—quickly became popular enough to silence all but the most hidebound right-wing challengers.

American voters, as two political scientists shrewdly noted in 1967, tend to be “ideological conservatives but operational liberals.” They dislike “big government,” but they adore any government policy that benefits them. Obama will not go down in history as another Roosevelt or Johnson (and he prays the war in Afghanistan will not grow into another Vietnam). But “Obamacare” will probably endure.


Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC

GOP Goes Nuclear On ObamaCare: Start Over, Socialized Medicine

Conservative Rallying Cries Spur Phone Call Frenzy


As a vote on health care reform nears, Republican and conservative groups are attempting to defeat the bill by pressuring undecided and vulnerable Democrats to vote against the legislation.

Bob Adams, the executive director of the Tea Party Nation, tells CNN that his organization will place a $547,000 television ad buy on Monday which will target 21 legislators. The group has spent $330,000 running ads since February 27.

The group has listed on their Web site the name and phone number of every Democrat who voted against the House's health care bill in November, as well as those of the 21 Democrats who voted "yea" in November but may change their vote.

As the phone lines jam, the offices of some of those Democrats are expressing frustration that their constituents may be unable to reach out.

New York Rep. Dan Maffei's press secretary Abby Gardner told CNN that her office was averaging about 500 phone calls per day last week, but that only 20 or so were from constituents in Maffei's district.

"The calls from the district are very mixed pro/for [and] against health care legislation," Gardner said. "The calls from outside of the district are exclusively against health care."

"Unfortunately the call volume makes it difficult for people to get through, and while I think the groups who really generate these calls consider jamming our phone lines a sign of strength and success, it really doesn't do anything to persuade the Rep.'s opinion on how to vote," Gardner said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is running television ads and placing phone calls targeting constituents of those Democrats. An NRCC spokesperson said the group has dedicated tens of thousands of dollars to the effort.

Meanwhile, the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, and the Salem Radio Network, a Christian radio network, announced Monday that they have launched the "One Million Patriots" campaign which they say is "expected to generate a million e-mails from constituents to their congressional members, opposing ObamaCare."

Sources: Tea Party Radio, Tea Party Nation, Youtube

John Patrick Bedell's Big Gov't Anger Mirrors Joseph Stack's, Raw Podcast...No Socialism!

Pentagon Shooter Railed Against U.S. On Internet


Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attacks have surfaced in writings by the Californian identified as the gunman who shot two Pentagon police officers before he was mortally wounded in a hail of return fire.

The shooter's death was confirmed early Friday, hours after the Thursday evening assault, as authorities searched for a motive behind the brazen attack. The two officers, grazed by bullets, were treated in a hospital.

The attack unfolded at the subway entrance to the massive Defense Department headquarters, as an eerie calm and silence were broken by the explosion of gunfire.

"He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face."

The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons, sending the shooter to the hospital with critical injuries. Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office, confirmed the man's death and said his body arrived at her office shortly after midnight.

John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was identified as the shooter. Officials said they'd found no immediate connection to terrorism but had not ruled it out.

Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was "determined to see that justice is served" in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.

The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was "a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions."

That same posting railed against the government's enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author's 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.

A law enforcement official told Fox News that the FBI is aware of the postings and video posted online from a person with Bedell's name. The FBI is working to confirm who actually posted the messages and videos.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.

Whatever the motive of Thursday's attack, the method resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire.

President Barack Obama was getting FBI updates on the Pentagon shooting through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Law enforcement officials were also scrutinizing a second man, who might have accompanied the shooter, and were running his name through databases.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.

After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Transit officials said the station would remain closed at least part of the day Friday while the FBI continued its investigation.

Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

"There was no distress," he said. "When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun."

"He wasn't pretending to be anyone. He was wearing a coat and walked up and just started shooting."

Keevill added: "We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hurt anyone."

Ronald Domingues, 74, who lives next door to Bedell's parents in a gated golf course community in Hollister, said he doesn't know the family well. But he said Bedell sometimes lived with his parents and struck him "like a normal young man."

"He just seemed like a normal guy to me," Domingues said. "I wouldn't suspect he would be involved in anything like this."

Domingues described the neighborhood as middle-class. He said the Bedells live in a one story southwestern-style stucco home. The house was dark Thursday night.




Joseph Andrew Stack's Full Suicide Note; Texas Plane Crash Pilot



"Well Mr. Brother IRS Man"...From Joseph Stack


If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.

The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here?

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.

On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.

In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer... and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL - Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. - This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. - The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:

· "another person" is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.

· "taxpayer" is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.

· "individual", "employee", or "worker" is you.



Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.

After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.

Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

02/18/2010


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Sources: AP, Fox News, EmbeddedArt.com, CNN, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Larry Kissell Blacklisted By NC Media For Voting No On Health Care

Congressman Larry Kissell (D) is being Black Listed and Pressured by North Carolina's local media including the Charlotte Observer, over his "No" vote on Obama's Health Care bill. (He previously voted "No".)

Now they are trying to destroy this man's reputation as a means of forcing him into voting "Yes" the second time around.

North Carolina's Media organizations are extremely Liberal, Partisan and Biased.

The Charlotte Observer happens to be losing customers and going broke because readers want FACTS but we keep getting Partisan Propaganda.

Quite often what the Charlotte Observer publishes is akin to "Big Brother" Brain Washing.

Its obvious on this Health Care issue someone from the Democratic Party is most likely paying Editorial staff to pressure Congressman Kissell.

They would rather Kissell vote to please them than vote for what's Fiscally right.

None of the Charlotte Observer staff has seen the entire health care bill or read the bill's language as Kissell has.

They are just listening to Pres. Obama's speeches, Mel Watt and Gov. Bev Perdue.

Pres. Obama doesn't want average American Voters to know what's in the Health Care bill because he doesn't want people to know the real truth about this so-called "Reform" legislation.

While Larry Kissell was on the campaign trail he supported Universal Health Care, however after being elected once he went to Washington and read this bill, he changed his mind as did several other Democrats.

As a Candidate Pres. Obama didn't say he wanted to take over Health Care, he said he wanted to Reform it and fix our broken Health Care System.

This particular bill is going to ruin our country with crazy, mind boggling Debt and give China & Russia total control over us.

Pres. Obama doesn't really care about providing Affordable Health Care as he proclaims, he just wants to help diminish America's power.

At one time I too was drunk from the Rhetoric of Obama's "kool-aid" but thank God now I see.

While I wholeheartedly agree our nation does need Health Care Insurance Reform, this particular bill is NOT the tool to accomplish that task!

I support Larry Kissell for his courageous stand.

I hope he places his trust in God Almighty and doesn't cave in to Dirty Political tactics from the DCCC.

Neither Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi takes the place of God.

Since none of them are listening to Voters, one day when they face God he'll will let them know how wrong they all were.

Check out the Charlotte Observer article below which proves how much pressure North Carolina's Corrupt Dems are placing on Congressman Kissell.



Larry Kissell Faces Pressure On Health Care



As President Obama and Congressional Democrats prepare their final push on health care overhaul, House leaders scrambling for votes are expected to turn up the pressure on members like Larry Kissell.

But the Montgomery County Democrat, who bucked his leadership in November, is poised to do it again.

"I continue to believe health care reform is necessary," he said in a statement. "However, my position has not changed on the health care reform proposal currently before Congress."

Today, Obama is expected to lay out a plan that includes several Republican-backed ideas. Aides say he's also likely to endorse a process requiring a simple Senate majority, not the current 60 votes.

That would throw health care back to the House, which narrowly passed one version in November. A switch of three votes would have killed it. Since then, one supporter has died, two retired and the lone Republican backer has hinted that he'll vote against it.

Kissell was one of 39 Democrats who voted against the bill, and one of three N.C. Democrats who did. Of those three, he's the only one from a district Obama carried in 2008.

"There's going to be plenty of pressure," said Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they're one or two or three votes short, then I think he's going to feel a lot of heat."



Medicare money

Kissell, whose 8th District stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville, was not available Tuesday. Asked about any pressure, spokeswoman Haven Kerchner said, "We often hear from folks on both sides of important national issues."

Kissell's Democratic primary opponent, retired educator Nancy Shakir, backs the House reform bill. After Kissell voted against it, she led a protest outside his Fayetteville office. She called it "Blow the Whistle on Kissell."

The six Republican candidates uniformly oppose Democratic health care proposals. One, Republican Lou Huddleston of Fayetteville, said he believes House leaders need Kissell's vote now more than before.

"I don't know that (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi is going to have the wiggle room," Huddleston said. "I don't think Larry Kissell has felt the pressure yet."

Kissell voted against the bill last fall because he said it would cut Medicare to help pay for health care reforms. "I made a promise and commitment that I would look out for Medicare, and I'm doing that," he said at the time.

Current Democratic proposals do the same.

"The method of funding makes it impossible for me to change my vote on that bill," he said this week.

Party-line pressure

Tricia Neuman, director of Medicare policy for the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said most proposals would reduce what some say are overpayments to private insurers who offer so-called Medicare Advantage plans. Of North Carolina's 1.4 million Medicare beneficiaries, 241,000 are in such plans.

She said the changes could result in fewer benefits, such as eye glasses, to some Medicare Advantage patients. But they also would extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, now facing insolvency by 2017.

"The idea that this is going to be a big hit to Medicare recipients is a stretch," Ornstein said.

Other Charlotte-area Democrats - Reps. Mel Watt of Charlotte and John Spratt of York - voted for the House plan once and are expected to again. Watt said he expects Kissell will be among those under pressure to line up with their party.

"I don't think it will be from me," he said. "It will be from the president and leadership and his own constituents."


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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Charlotte DSS Liable For 2 More Deaths Of Black Children, Where's Obama?

Two more Black Children (both Toddlers) have recently died due to Charlotte-Mecklenburg's Lazy, Non-Caring DSS Officials and Lack of Proper Intervention.

As I've mentioned in previous posts Charlotte's Leaders especially the Black Leaders, don't give a darn about Black Children unless their parents are Fraternity/Sorority members.

North Carolina DSS Officials often keep Low Income, Single Mothers in Poverty by NOT allowing them to earn a decent salary while still receiving some type of Benefits until they become Self-Sufficient.

This modern Slavery tactic encourages these women to have more babies out of Wedlock, which of course means more Federal funds.

Its basically a Federally Funded Money Laundering scheme.

Who suffers most?

North Carolina's Minority Children because the Federal Funds are only used on North Carolina's White Children.

Its obvious the Civil Rights of NC's Minority Children are being violated.

Does anyone care? No!

Especially NOT Charlotte's Scared, Selfish Black Leaders.

Whenever NC or Charlotte DSS launches an Investigation all they usually do is ask the accused Mothers to attend Parenting Classes.

They don't order them to attend, nor do they order these Women to receive Mental Health Counseling, thus the cycle of Child Abuse/ Child Neglect continues.

On the other hand whenever NC DSS Officials place Children in Foster Care homes, quite frequently the Foster Care parents end up abusing those same Children Physically and Sexually.

When the Children die, NC officials just put them in a pauper's grave, hold a tired Child Fatality Task Force meeting and move on.

That's It!

No North Carolina DSS Officials or Staff heads roll not ever.

The ONLY reason Shaniya Davis received national attention is because her father was White.

If her father had been Black the News Affiliates and Mainstream Media would NOT have cared.

Especially not North Carolina's Biased Media organizations.

But get this!!!!!

Shaniya Davis' mother is out on bond!

Can you believe it?

She sold Shaniya Davis to settle a drug debt, the child was raped and killed, now her mother Antionette Davis is out on bond.

And....she's Pregnant again!!!!!

An independent, outside Investigation is most definitely needed.

When is the Obama Administration or U.S. Dept of Justice going to step in and make states like North Carolina with a long history of Poor DSS Oversight and Racism, obey the Law?

Aren't the Democrats supposed to be the political party of Social Conscience? (Liberal Socialism)

Does Pres. Obama care about ALL Children or just Malia and Sasha?

Who will speak up for these dead Children?

By the way Eugenics and Aborting all Black babies is NOT the answer!

Providing an Equal Education, Mental Health Counseling, Birth Control and Equal Opportunities to Minorities would help much more.

Those two children are now with Jesus but they died prematurely.

I'll keep praying.






Charlotte Court Documents Show Mother Had Left Her Kids Alone Before


A mother whose unsupervised toddlers died in a weekend house fire had left her children alone before, according to documents obtained by NewsChannel 36.

"I heard the child screaming, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!'" said Habib al-Zaid, who lives on Rowan Street, where the fire broke out Sunday.

He said he assumed the little girl thought her mother might still be home, but soon learned two toddlers were still inside the burning house.

Police say their mother was nowhere to be found

"It's sickening," al-Zaid said.

Police charged Orgal Opata with murder after her two youngest children -- a 1-year-old and 2-year-old -- died. Two other children -- 4 and 7 years old -- made it out alive.

"She deserves to be convicted for doing something like that," al-Zaid said.

Police haven't said where Opata was at the time, but neighbors say she has left the children home alone before.

Court documents detail a previous arrest for leaving the children alone.

Firefighters say in October 2009, someone driving by happened to see Opata's 2-year-old wandering alone in the street, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a diaper.

Court documents give a detailed account of how Opata told police she went to pick up her oldest child at a nearby elementary school and admitted she "put all three children in the bedroom and shut the door."

The court documents also show police found the 9-month-old lying on the bed, face down with a wet diaper and found no adult supervision at the house.

Al-Zaid wasn't surprised, but said, "There's no reason for anybody to leave their children in the house alone."

The Department of Social Services has refused to comment on whether the agency was already investigating the mother because of the October arrest.

Opata is scheduled to appear in court later this week. She is charged with murder, reckless/gross felony abuse, exposing children to fire and one count of burning resulting in serious injury to a firefighter.

NewsChannel 36 has confirmed a child fatality task force will be investigating the deaths.




Charlotte Mother Of Dead Children Had Been Charged Before


The mother of two unsupervised toddlers who died in a Charlotte house fire on Sunday was charged last fall with neglect in connection with leaving three young children home alone, according to Mecklenburg court records.

Orgal Paulette Opata, 26, was charged with child neglect in the Oct. 27 incident, after a passerby brought Opata’s two-year-old son, Josiah Hawthorne, to a fire station and said the child was in the street wearing a T-shirt and a diaper. The person also said a four-year-old was at the same house, on the front porch.

Firefighters went to the house on Rowan Street in the Thomasboro community, found Opata’s four-year-old son, and also discovered 9-month-old Gabriel Hawthorne lying on a bed facedown with a wet diaper.

Opata, who returned to the house shortly, was charged then with three counts of neglect of juveniles “left alone locked in (a) room without adult supervision.” Opata told police, according to records, that she had left the house for a short time to pick up her older daughter at nearby Thomasboro Elementary. The case was scheduled for court this month.

On Sunday, the two youngest children -- Josiah and Gabriel Hawthorne -- died in a 6 a.m. fire at the house. Neighbors helped rescue the two older children. Opata wasn’t home and police spent hours searching for her. Charges against Opata include two counts of murder and three counts of reckless/gross felony child abuse.







Antoinette Davis, Mom Accused Of Selling Shaniya Davis As Sex Slave, Is Pregnant Again


Antoinette Nicole Davis, the woman accused of selling her 5-year-old daughter, Shaniya Davis, into sexual slavery before the girl was murdered, has got an unnerving surprise. She's pregnant again and carrying the baby while sitting in a North Carolina prison and awaiting a potential trial.

Thus far, Antoinette Davis has been charged with human trafficking. Arrest documents said she "knowingly provide[d] Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude" and she "permit[ted] an act of prostitution." Fayetteville, N.C. police have not yet said if those charges will be amended to include murder.

Shaniya Davis was found dead Monday as searchers discovered the girl's body off a rural road in Sanford, N.C., around 30 miles from her Fayetteville home. The discovery brought a gruesome end to a week-long search carried about by hundreds of officers and volunteers. Antoinette Davis reported her daughter missing Nov. 10.

News of Antoinette Davis' pregnancy comes from her aunt, Leona Cromertie, who also said Sunday that her niece has a second child who is now seven.

Cromertie, who believes in her niece's innocence, says that Antoinette Davis, 25, was dating Clarence D. Coe at the time, the man whom Antoinette Davis initially accused of kidnapping Shaniya Davis, according to The Fayetteville Observer.

Police investigated Coe, but he was quickly let go as hotel surveillance video surfaced last Tuesday showing another man, Mario Andrette McNeill, carrying Shaniya Davis through a hallway of the Comfort Suites hotel in Sanford, N.C., about 40 minutes from Raleigh.

McNeill, 29, has so far been charged with kidnapping. Police claim he admitted taking the girl, but his lawyer, Allen Rogers, said he will plead not guilty. Either way, Fayetteville police said he was of no help in finding Shaniya Davis.

On Monday, Antoinette Davis was calm and quiet during a court appearance. She provided one-word answers to the judge's questions. She requested a court-appointed attorney and did not enter a plea.

Her sister, Brenda Davis, 20, said she does not believe the charges.

"I don't believe she could hurt her children," said Brenda Davis, who spoke with her sister at the jail Sunday. Antoinette Davis' aunt, Yvonne Mitchell, said the mother had two jobs and would never harm the child.

Fayetteville police spokeswoman Theresa Chance declined to talk about additional charges. She also wouldn't comment on a cause of death or the condition of Shaniya's body.

Antoinette Davis only recently took custody of Shaniya Davis, according to the child's father Bradley Lockhart, who said he raised her for the first four years of her life.

Lockhart described his relationship with Davis as a "one-night stand" and said he did not know McNeill.

Davis struggled financially over the years, but she recently got a job and her own place, so Lockhart said he decided to give her a chance with their daughter.

"I should've never let her go over there," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.




Mourners Remember Tiffany Wright 15, Shot At Bus Stop


Tiffany Wright stood alone in the dark, waiting for her school bus.

It was just before 6 a.m., and her foster grandmother had walked back home to get Tiffany's water bottle.

Tiffany, 15, was eight months pregnant but determined to stay on track in school. She wanted to be a lawyer. And after just a few weeks at Hawthorne High, she had impressed teachers as smart and ambitious, despite a difficult childhood.

At 5:51, Tiffany sent a text.

"Wheres the bus?"

One stop away, replied her friend, already on the bus.

At 5:55, as the bus lumbered toward Tiffany's stop, people began calling police to report gunshots.

A school bus dispatcher radioed Tiffany's bus driver: Change course - something's happening ahead.

Tiffany lay dead in the road, shot in the head, that morning, Monday, Sept. 14. Her baby girl was delivered at the hospital and lived a week, but died Sunday.

Nobody's charged in the killings, but police call Tiffany's adoptive brother, Royce Mitchell, a "person of interest."

In the months before she died, local agencies took steps aimed at stabilizing her home life and keeping her safe. But her story exposes failures in the system that was supposed to protect her.

Among the missteps:

•In February, a Mecklenburg court clerk appointed Mitchell as Tiffany's temporary guardian - even though he was a felon who served time in federal prison. He was also tried in 2006 for murder, but found not guilty. And last year, he was accused of domestic violence, though the case was dismissed.

•In July, social workers told police that Mitchell, 36, might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany, but police didn't question him about it for seven weeks, and didn't charge him with the rape until after Tiffany was killed.

•This month, Mecklenburg social services failed to cut off communication between Tiffany, who was in foster care, and Mitchell, said a source close to the investigation.

On the day of Tiffany's killing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police jailed Mitchell for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a child, naming Tiffany as the victim.

Police defend their work, saying they followed the industry's best practices - which takes time. Police didn't feel a need to rush, they say, because they believed Tiffany was secure, hidden in a foster home with no threat to her safety.

Police say it's hard to prove statutory rape: Of the 262 reports of statutory rape police received over three years, only 16 percent - 42 cases - were accepted by prosecutors.

Experts say statutory rape cases are complicated because they involve victims ages 13, 14 or 15 who often consider themselves voluntary participants in sex with someone at least six years older. So victims can be reluctant to help police.

But child advocates say in cases like Tiffany's, police should act more aggressively. An immediate arrest sends a signal to a suspect and can persuade them to stay away from victims.

"The cases may be difficult to win, but they're not difficult to charge," says Brett Loftis of Charlotte's Council for Children's Rights.

UNCC criminologist Paul Friday says: "Often, nothing is done in these kinds of cases because they're based on improper assumptions about the rationality of someone that age. But the minors are often unaware of disease, birth control and they can be exploited by someone."

Adopted by foster mother

Tiffany first entered the child welfare system as a toddler in Buffalo, N.Y., when her mother lost custody.

She was adopted at 4 by her foster mother, Alma Wright, an older woman with eight grown children, who was excited about raising another child.

One of Wright's grown sons was Royce Mitchell, a star quarterback in high school who'd gone on to play for a semi-pro team in Buffalo. But Mitchell also was indicted in 1999 as part of a drug trafficking ring and went to federal prison.

While he was in prison, authorities also charged Mitchell with an earlier murder, but a jury found him not guilty.

In 2004, Alma and Tiffany left Buffalo for North Carolina, settling near Kings Mountain. Tiffany made friends easily at school and church. She ran track at Bessemer City High School.

In 2007, Mitchell was released from prison and followed his mother to North Carolina.

But last fall, Alma Wright got sick. Friends at church helped out with Tiffany, inviting her for dinners and weekends. Tiffany spent time with Mitchell and his wife, too.

Alma Wright died Jan. 25, and Tiffany moved in with the Mitchells in Charlotte.

On Jan. 30, Royce Mitchell asked a Mecklenburg court to appoint him and his wife as Tiffany's guardians.

On his application, he wrote: "We are seeking guardianship because we were requested to do so by Mrs. Alma Wright before she died."

He wanted to transfer Tiffany to West Mecklenburg High School.

The court set a hearing for Feb. 5 and appointed a child advocate to study the situation and look after Tiffany's best interests in court.

There's no transcript of what happened in court, and the clerk who handled Tiffany's case declined to discuss his decision.

Frederick Benson, a Mecklenburg assistant clerk of superior court, appointed Mitchell the temporary guardian of Tiffany's welfare.

It's unclear if Benson, a lawyer, knew about Mitchell's criminal background. Court clerks are not required to perform background checks in guardianship cases, says Clerk of Superior Court Martha Curran. It's up to each clerk to decide what checks are necessary, and they often rely on court-appointed child advocates to advise them in such cases.

Tiffany's advocate, lawyer Martha Efird, declined to discuss her actions in the case.

It was in the weeks surrounding the Feb. 5 court hearing that Tiffany got pregnant, if hospital estimates are accurate.

But friends say Tiffany, who started at West Mecklenburg High in February, wouldn't realize for four or five months that she was pregnant.

On Feb. 27, clerk of court Benson ordered DSS to conduct a "home study" of the Mitchell household. Officials won't release their findings.

But Mitchell didn't keep custody long, according to several of Tiffany's friends in King's Mountain.

In late March, Mitchell left Tiffany at a group home called With Friends in Gastonia, according to Marlene Jefferies and Cruceta Jeffeirs, two adult family friends who watched Tiffany grow up.

The group home wouldn't confirm that. But the friends say the home reported to social services that Tiffany was abandoned. And she was soon back in foster care.

On March 31, Jeffeirs, a Shelby pastor, wrote a letter to Benson seeking custody of Tiffany: "My desire is to see Tiffany accomplish all the goals that she has set for herself and I believe she can do that in a stable environment with lots of guidance and love."

DSS officials in Gaston and Mecklenburg won't discuss Tiffany's case or answer questions about what steps they took to protect her.

But friends and family say Tiffany was eventually placed in the care of foster parent Susan Barber, in a townhome off Mallard Creek Road in Derita.

By July, it was clear Tiffany was pregnant, friends say.

Barber tried to shield Tiffany from talking to those she believed might be bad influences, according to Tiffany's cousin Brittany Page. But a source close to the investigation said Tiffany and Mitchell continued communicating.

Despite repeated attempts, Barber could not be reached.

As the school year approached, Tiffany prepared to change schools again, this time to Hawthorne High in Charlotte, which offers a special program for pregnant students.

Delayed investigation

On July 27, social workers reported to police that Royce Mitchell might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany.

It took eight days for a detective to look at the case, and three days more for it to be officially assigned to Teresa Johnson, a detective with CMPD's youth crime and domestic violence unit.

Another 12 days passed before Johnson interviewed Tiffany.

It's unclear when detective Johnson discovered Mitchell's background, but it wasn't enough to ramp up the investigation. Investigators say they believed Tiffany was safe in a foster home and faced no threats from Mitchell.

Police say their performance in the case followed procedure and met standards.

Police interview alleged victims immediately if the crime has occurred within the previous 72 hours, so they can gather evidence that may remain. But in cases like Tiffany's - where months had elapsed since the alleged offense - police try to arrange just one interview when children and teen victims of abuse are involved.

Police acknowledge that strategy takes time but minimizes trauma and reduces the chances that young victims might be led into inaccurate testimony by repeated questioning.

Police also let such victims decide when they want to be interviewed at the county's child-victim center called Pat's Place. There, specially trained interviewers talk to victims, while social workers, psychologists, police and others watch from another room.

Tiffany chose an Aug. 19 interview. She didn't say much during the formal interview. But later that day, Johnson won her trust and obtained enough information to move forward with the investigation.

No response from Mitchell

The next day, Aug. 20, the detective made her first call to Mitchell to ask him about the charge, she says. Johnson left a message and gave him a few days to call back.

When Mitchell didn't respond, she made calls over the next two weeks to social workers and a federal probation officer to ask Mitchell to come talk to police.

Police say they didn't immediately arrest him because they believed they could get better information if he talked voluntarily.

On Sept. 9, a federal probation official told Johnson that Mitchell was not coming in.

On Sept. 10, a team of social workers, police and other agencies held a standard follow-up meeting to discuss how to proceed in Tiffany's case.

On Friday, Sept. 11, detective Johnson phoned Mitchell's wife and left a message. She asked her to call back to discuss Tiffany, Johnson says, but didn't give details of the rape allegation.

That Monday, Tiffany was shot and killed.

As emergency vehicles rolled to the scene, Tiffany's school bus was diverted from its normal route. But the students could see flashing lights. Tiffany's friends on the bus, Cimone Black and Tamia Corpening, began to worry.

"I kept texting her phone...," Cimone said. Then she started calling, but all she got was voice mail.

The bus continued on to Hawthorne. For Tamia, the hourlong ride was excruciating.

Nobody said a word.


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Sources: WCNC, McClatchy Newspapers, AP, The State, ABC News, CBS News, Google Maps