Author: Poetrooper

First read this story from Daily Caller about Putin’s response to Obama’s intention to return an armored brigade to Europe in the face of new Russian geopolitical threats. It seems the Russian despot is once again upstaging our bicycle-helmeted commander-in-chief to the tune of more than two divisions, once again playing tournament chess while Obama plays kindergarten checkers.

Then read this little jewel of information regarding the soldiering status of what is supposedly our most stalwart ally in Europe in standing up to any threats from the Russian Bear.

I hope this juxtaposition of news doesn’t make any of you gag on your Wheaties.

In a comment to a piece I wrote about New York state regulators nixing two badly needed natural gas pipelines, the writer noted a phenomenon that in my opinion should be brought to a quick and permanent halt. That many New Yorkers, like denizens of other northern states, like to retire in warmer climes is not news, and it is completely understandable. However, there is unique twist on this retirement gambit that most of us have probably not considered.

New York governments at all levels offer a fertile environment for public employee unions and, as a consequence, highly paid public servants whose union negotiators and colluding Democrat politicians have secured for them lucrative pension plans. Not only that, but these public servants can retire at relatively early ages after relatively short periods of service so that they have many years of life remaining to enjoy these taxpayer-funded perquisites.

It’s that term taxpayer-funded that is the sore spot for the commenter, and not for the reason you might think – that his taxes fund generous retirements for public servants that most taxpayers can’t afford. Nope, that’s one of those “death and taxes” certainties it does no good to gripe about. No, the issue that has him ticked off is how so many of these public employee retirees take their lucrative pensions and move to Florida, where they have to pay no state income taxes. This further reduces the tax base in the state paying their tax-funded retirements, thus increasing the tax burden on still working New Yorkers who already pay more taxes than any other state.

Your first inclination might be to dismiss this complaint as just more taxpayer grousing, until you discover that government just happens to be the single largest employer in New York, meaning that this is a double-whammy problem that is only going to grow until that government wakes up and realizes it has a growing revenue problem. Huge numbers of huge pensions paid from tax coffers, but untaxed as income so as to return any of that income to those coffers, is going to hurt badly at some future point. Consider as well that when these public servants head south, it’s not just their state pensions that go untaxed, but also their top-dollar Social Security checks, which, based on their other income, would surely be fully taxable. Also, how many will hang onto their New York homes? What about the possible loss to the state in property taxes? Consider as well that all the sales taxes generated by those very generous retirement incomes from sales of booze, boats, and beauty treatments are going to be collected in Florida, not in the state writing the checks.

Are you starting to get the picture here? A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. And the state writing the checks gets zip.

Factor also into the equation the reality that many of these public servant retirement incomes are greater than those of many working New Yorkers, and you can better understand how this tax-ducking situation might grate as being a grossly unfair example of biting the hand that feeds you. However, despite the sting of ingratitude, it is unlikely that any blue state in thrall to the collective greed of public service unions, like New York, will take any steps to close this tax drain. The situation certainly serves to illustrate to ordinary citizens that public service nowadays is all about the bucks and not about any higher sense of loyalty to the state and the citizens who are paying your very generous retirement.

Liberals are truly talented when it comes to devising new means of taxing the working stiffs. Perhaps the New York liberals responsible for all these budget-busting pension programs and their counterparts in other blue states facing a similar situation should enact a non-resident pension tax on all these tax-paid tax avoiders to be withheld from their fat retirement checks.

Call it the Flight to Florida Surtax…

Crossposted at American Thinker

Donald Trump appeals to a large segment of American conservatives because he is exploiting a weakness they have long recognized and grown increasingly angry over as the condition worsens. Republican Party leadership, especially in Congress, are a craven bunch who so fear the liberal media and the tyranny of political correctness that they have allowed media-protected Democrats to walk all over them, even in matters where Democrat bureaucrats are criminally culpable.

I am reminded of this by the latest dismissive letter sent to two Senate committee chairmen by hotshot Washington attorney Mark MacDougall on behalf of his client, Bryan Pagliano, Hillary’s I.T. guru, in which he essentially tells them to go pound sand, chiding them in the process for relying on the media for their legal misinterpretation of his client’s constitutional rights:

“With all appropriate respect, whether and when a citizen may assert a constitutional right is not up to your legal staff,” the lawyer wrote. “Whatever agreement Mr. Pagliano may have reached with the Department of Justice in no way constitutes a waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights.

“Much of the media reporting with regard to Mr. Pagliano – that is apparently relied upon by your Committees – is inaccurate and misleading.”

From Fast and Furious through the IRS scandals and Benghazi to the present Hillary e-mail investigations, the Democratic Party’s entrenched bureaucrat buddies have spit in the collective eye of the Republican congressional leadership – not quite ignoring them completely, but responding to them with such deliberately disdainful delay and minimal compliance with their demands as to casually convey the Democrats’ utter contempt for the supposed equal powers of the legislative branch of federal governance. And how does the Republican congressional leadership react to such disrespect? Well, for example, Republicans supposedly responded to the Obama administration’s complete intransigence in the case of Fast and Furious by citing Attorney General Eric Holder for both criminal and civil contempt of the House. And what did that get them except for a pair of big sneering middle fingers on Holder’s way out the door more than two years later?

Three years after IRS official Lois Lerner was exposed for politically weaponizing the IRS to suppress conservative voting in the 2012 elections, nothing has been done to this federal bureaucrat, who hid her criminal behavior during the performance of her job behind the Fifth Amendment. That is a protection that should not exist for federal employees when it regards criminal job activity. Nevertheless, while Republicans in Congress blustered and threatened to no end, Lerner is free and drawing a six-figure retirement, protected by her bosses and a co-conspiring federal Justice Department full of Democrats.

The Obama administration knew from the outset as it took power in 2009 that the way to consolidate political power was to politicize the prosecutorial process in such a manner as to be able to punish enemies and protect friends, the essence of Chicago politics. It is the prosecutorial form of jury nullification: no matter how clear the criminality, you simply ignore it until it has faded into political oblivion or, if pressured, devise murky justifications for why it is not possible to indict. A nation of laws survives as such only as long as those responsible for enforcing those laws willingly apply them to themselves, which the Obama administration clearly never had any intention of doing. We should have known that a political cartel with its toes splayed deep in the muck of Chicago’s Democrat swamp would quickly move to corrupt the Justice Department so that it then had nothing to fear, so that any criminality involved in expanding its power could be nullified.

Eric Holder was perfect for that job because he had learned at the feet of the Clintons, masters of the legal obfuscation process, and Holder held a card the Clintons didn’t: the Black Ace of Race, which he didn’t hesitate to play to counter criticism and block congressional investigations. In this he was constantly aided and abetted by Democrats, especially members of the Congressional Black Caucus, sitting in committee meetings, solemnly nodding agreement every time Holder slapped that black ace down on the Republicans’ evidentiary table. Had we had a courageous contingent in Congress to counter such corruption, Republicans should have been able to have contained it, especially once we had gained back our Republican majorities. The Constitution does grant enforcement powers, including incarceration, to Congress to deal with such nullification of the nation’s laws by executive scofflaws, but it takes men and women of principle to enforce the necessary provisions. And as we have seen, they simply were not there.

With the Obama administration and its completely politicized Justice Department poised once again to nullify the crimes of another media-protected Democrat, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s appeal to America’s conservatives sick of this flouting of law and order on behalf of protected elites can only grow. This ongoing Republican chicken-heartedness has left conservatives holding a vacuum of fortitude. While Donald Trump’s vows to prosecute Crooked Hillary may sound like nothing but hot air to some, such threats may well carry him to victory because even in politics, nature abhors a vacuum. Trump has found the vacuum, and he’s filling it.

This brings the question: if Trump wins the presidency, will the Republican leadership finally grow a spine?

Crossposted at American Thinker

A gay couple walks into a Christian deli/bakery in Texas wanting to order a wedding cake and associated catering services, and the owners refuse on the basis that their strongly held religious beliefs consider homosexuality an abomination and thus forbid their participation. What’s likely to happen next? We all know that the local media, tipped off by gay activists who were just waiting for the expected response, will immediately pick up on the story and present it as another example of homophobia and discrimination against members of the gay community. The local lead will be grabbed by the national liberal media and whipped into a froth of indignation, setting the scene for a federal discrimination lawsuit based on violations of the gay couple’s constitutional right to equal treatment as American citizens.

At the same time as that gay couple walks into the bakery, just a couple of doors down the street, a medically retired sergeant first class, an Army infantryman with a Purple Heart earned for the loss of his lower right leg during the last of his multiple combat tours in the Middle East, walks into a national coffee chain with his son and orders two large black coffees, no cream, no sugar, no nothing but coffee. The barista notices the .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol holstered on the sergeant’s hip and tells him he must leave, as no firearms are permitted on the premises, as a sign by the entrance clearly explains. The sergeant apologizes for failing to notice the sign, and he limps out quietly, followed by his bewildered young son. No gun rights protesters are waiting outside to begin a loud demonstration, no local TV station has been alerted, and there most certainly will be no high-publicity lawsuits filed.

The bakery owner feels that the freedom to practice his religion without government interference allows him the freedom to deny his services to the gay couple who feel they are being deprived of their right to equal treatment under the law. The retired soldier is exercising his clearly stated constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The coffee corporation is enforcing a corporate policy allowed under Texas law, but less constitutionally certain, to ban the presence of firearms on its premises, a right fortified by a long tradition of property rights.

Conflicting rights in both cases – yet in only one will one side be taken by the media and used to portray the other as a shameless bigot and denier of constitutionally guaranteed protections, bringing the obvious question:

If not for the determined gay activists and a complicit media, is there any real difference in terms of our constitutional rights? Does the biblically inspired local baker have a lesser right to conduct his business as he sees fit than the corporate coffee sellers who impose their policies based on a liberal corporate culture reflective of the CEO’s personal bias against firearms? What would be the result if the baker put a sign in his window politely explaining that his religious beliefs prevent him from participating in gay marriage ceremonies? Is that at all different from the corporate coffee shop saying that you must suspend your constitutional right to keep and bear arms to enter these premises because our owner dislikes guns?

You tell me…

Crossposted at American Thinker