Where Are My Keys?

This doesn't make any sense..

It was impossible for the Bomber Brothers to shoot at police, because neither one of them had a license to own a firearm.  In fact, it was illegal for the younger brother to even apply for a permit.  So how were they able to have gun battles with police? 

But neither brother appears to have been legally entitled to own or carry firearms where they lived, a fact that may add to the national debate over current gun laws. Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases, legislation that opponents argued would do nothing to stop criminals from buying guns illegally.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in the shootout with police, would have been required to apply for a gun license with the local police department where he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

But there is no record of him having done so, according to Cambridge Police Department spokesman Dan Riviello.

Even if he had earlier received a gun license from somewhere outside Cambridge, that license would have to be registered with Cambridge police upon becoming a resident of the city, Riviello said. In Massachusetts, gun licenses are issued by municipal police departments.

"There is no record of him having a license to carry," Riviello told Reuters.

Tsarnaev's younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, who was captured alive on Friday after the manhunt, would have been too young to get a handgun license. Under state law, residents under 21 may only apply for a so-called firearms identification card, which allows the holder to own only rifles that hold 10 rounds or less and shotguns.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had no record of a firearms ID card in Cambridge. The police department in Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar was a student, said they had no record of gun licenses or ID cards for either brother.

It's almost as if those that are intent on breaking the law will ignore laws currently in place or something.

Ironically, Massachusetts was hailed as having some of the toughest laws for guns on the books.

IN 1998, Massachusetts passed what was hailed as the toughest gun-control legislation in the country. Among other stringencies, it banned semiautomatic “assault” weapons, imposed strict new licensing rules, prohibited anyone convicted of a violent crime or drug trafficking from ever carrying or owning a gun, and enacted severe penalties for storing guns unlocked.

“Today, Massachusetts leads the way in cracking down on gun violence,” said Republican Governor Paul Cellucci as he signed the bill into law. “It will save lives and help fight crime in our communities.” Scott Harshbarger, the state’s Democratic attorney general, agreed: “This vote is a victory for common sense and for the protection of our children and our neighborhoods.” One of the state’s leading anti-gun activists, John Rosenthal of Stop Handgun Violence, joined the applause. “The new gun law,” he predicted, “will certainly prevent future gun violence and countless grief.”

I guess that only applies to legal gun owners.

 I do find it interesting that as of 7:46 pm MST, Huffington Post, in all of its Boston Bombing coverage, neglects to mention that the brothers weren't legally able to carry firearms in Massachusetts.  I wonder why?

Yes Wolf, the American People were misled..

Too bad you didn't investigate claims made by the Obama Administration prior to Obamacare becoming the law of the land:

 

Funny, isn't it?

After telling us for weeks how the Obama Sequester would cause immediately loss of jobs for DoD workers, the Federal Government somehow found a way to ease the impact:

Defense officials say the Pentagon will sharply cut the number of unpaid furlough days civilians will have to take in the next several months from 22 to 14, reducing the financial impact of the budget cuts on as many as 700,000 workers.

Officials say Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the decision Wednesday. Military and defense leaders continue to work through the details, trying to decide how to allocate the more than $10 billion Congress shifted to operations accounts. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Interesting that when faced with a crisis of damaging political capital, this Administration was able to find other places to cut spending.

Now can they begin to apply that same determination to find other areas of waste within the budget?

"Settled Science", right Enviros?

Since reality isn't coming anywhere close to what was predicted by all the "experts", we'll hear tons of stories from MSM about how wrong they were, right?

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data. The forecasts have also forced jobs abroad as manufacturers relocate to places with no emissions targets.

A version of the graph appears in a leaked draft of the IPCC’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report due out later this year. It comes as leading climate scientists begin to admit that their worst fears about global warming will not be realised.

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower.
Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature since January 1997 – as this newspaper first disclosed last year. 

It's almost as if Earth somehow regulates itself-"allowing" cooling when things get to warm, and warming when things get too cool.  Could have sworn I have been saying that for quite some time now.

Many scientists say the pause, and new research into factors such as smoke particles and ocean cycles, has made them rethink what is termed ‘climate sensitivity’ – how much the world will warm for a given level of CO2.

Yesterday Piers Forster, Climate Change Professor at Leeds University, said: ‘The fact that global surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 15 years, combined with good knowledge of the terms changing climate, make the high estimates unlikely.’

And Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said: ‘The models are running too hot. The flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two.’

James Annan, of Frontier Research For Global Change, a prominent ‘warmist’, recently said high estimates for climate sensitivity now look ‘increasingly untenable’, with the true figure likely to be about half of the IPCC prediction in its last report in 2007.

Why do I get the feeling that this new information and admissions from some of the leading MMGW advancers will somehow be downplayed or ignored?

Taxes around Obamacare have doubled? Who knew?

If estimates have doubled already, imagine what the costs will look like once people start using the services in Obamacare.

Provision	2010 Estimate, 2010-2019, $billion	2012 Estimate, 2013-2022, $billion
0.9% payroll tax on wages and self-employment income and 3.8% t tax on dividends, capital gains, and other investment income for taxpayers earning over $200,000 (singles) / $250,000 (married)	210.2	317.7
“Cadillac tax” on high-cost plans *	32	111
Employer mandate *	52	106
Annual tax on health insurance providers *	60.1	101.7
Individual mandate *	17	55
Annual tax on drug manufacturers/importers *	27	34.2
2.3% excise tax on medical device manufacturers/importers*	20	29.1
Limit FSAs in cafeteria plans *	13	24
Raise 7.5% AGI floor on medical expense deduction to 10% *	15.2	18.7
Deny eligibility of “black liquor” for cellulosic biofuel producer credit	23.6	15.5
Codify economic substance doctrine	4.5	5.3
Increase penalty for nonqualified HSA distributions *	1.4	4.5
Impose limitations on the use of HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and Archer MSAs to purchase over-the-counter medicines *	5.0	4
Impose fee on insured and self-insured health plans; patient-centered outcomes research trust fund *	2.6	3.8
Eliminate deduction for expenses allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy	4.5	3.1
Impose 10% tax on tanning services *	2.7	1.5
Limit deduction for compensation to officers, employees, directors, and service providers of certain health insurance providers	0.6	0.8
Modify section 833 treatment of certain health organizations	0.4	0.4
Other Revenue Effects	60.3	222**
Additional requirements for section 501(c)(3) hospitals	Negligible	Negligible
Employer W-2 reporting of value of health benefits	Negligible	Negligible
Total Gross Tax Increase:	569.2	1,058.3
* Provision targets households earning less than $250,000. ** Includes CBO’s $216.0 billion estimate for “Associated Effects of Coverage Provisions on Tax Revenues” and $6.0 billion within CBO’s “Other Revenue Provisions” category that is not otherwise accounted for in the CBO or JCT estimates.
Source: Joint Committee on Taxation Estimates, prepared by Ways and Means Committee Staff

This is only the beginning, I'm afraid.

Good thing all those Democrats in Congress didn't read the bill before they voted "yes" on it.

SNL actually makes fun of Obama..

 

How will POTUS blame this on the sequester?

Too bad for Obama that the MSM didn't sit on this story until Monday..

Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank.

Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, climbed 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 76 economists called for a 0.2 percent advance. Incomes slumped 3.6 percent, sending the saving rate down to the lowest level since November 2007.

Employment gains, the rebound in housing and growing demand for autos will probably keep supporting consumer spending in the first quarter as the world’s largest economy picks up from an end-of-year slowdown. Even so, rising gasoline prices and the need to rebuild nest eggs may make it difficult for households to match last quarter’s performance.

“It’s going to be touch and go for the consumer for the next few months,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania, who correctly projected the 3.6 percent drop in income. “The consumer is going to be able to support the recovery, but they’re not going to be able to take it” to a higher level, he said.

(emphasis mine)

Wow, so higher taxes mean less money out there in the Economy?  Who could have predicted that?!

Ahh, it's nice to be a taxpayer..

Remember, these are the same folks that will be administering your healthcare.

DID YOU KNOW that Philadelphia prison inmates collected unemployment benefits while sitting in their cells?

They did: 1,162 of them got an average of $344 a week for, on average, 18 weeks. That's more than $7 million.

And many of the 25,500 inmates in other county jails in Pennsylvania did the same.

We're talking cash for cons - tens of millions of tax dollars paid by employers and employees fraudulently scammed by incarcerated crooks.

Makes you want to get up every day, go to work and pay your taxes, right?

Well, hold on. Before you pick up torches and pitchforks, you should know that the state says such payments are ending under a program put in place by the Corbett administration, and unemployment-compensation payments to 3,000 inmates have stopped, saving up to $18 million a year.

But how'd this cons' con happen?

"Not sure," says Philadelphia Prison System information officer Shawn Dawes. "It just wasn't on anybody's radar."

Philly prisons commissioner Louis Giorla issued a statement to the Daily News praising state efforts, adding: "Offenders who are already in custody and supported by public funds should not be able to collect twice."

But they did. And getting the money back, even by attaching tax returns of scammers, is difficult, officials concede.

Such abuse isn't new, or unique to Pennsylvania.

A recent audit in South Carolina showed that inmates were getting unemployment benefits. Last year, Arizona found that 475 felons collected $1.1 million.

Still, the apparent scope of the problem here, its duration and the curiously quiet way it's being dealt with raises questions for which there seem to be few answers.

For example: How'd it happen?

Well, state corrections officials, since 1997, have linked with the Department of Labor and Industry to match incoming state prisoners' Social Security numbers with unemployment-compensation records to stop any benefits.

But it was only last month that Labor and Industry issued a news release - missed by most, apparently reported only by the online news service Paindependent.com and not available on Labor and Industry's website - announcing a "new cross-match system to identify and stop benefit payments" to county prisoners.This raises questions:

Why didn't state officials talk with county officials 16 years ago? Why didn't Labor and Industry, already working with state prisons, also work with counties?

Answers I got from Labor and Industry and the Department of Corrections were the same: "Don't know."

Democrats continue to beat the drum that we have a revenue problem.  Incidents like this reinforce the Republican position that we have a spending problem.

The United States losing more tax revenue to China..

Instead of fighting in Las Vegas, the boxing capitol of the World, Manny Pacquiao will fight in China.  Why?  To keep more money in his pocket: 

Yahoo! Sports:  Manny Pacquiao Prefers to Fight Juan Manuel Marquez in China Because of High U.S. Taxes:

Manny Pacquiao's chief adviser insisted Monday that the Filipino superstar's preference is for his next bout – a fifth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez – to take place away from Las Vegas, with the off-shore Chinese gambling resort of Macau emerging as the "favorite."

Michael Koncz told Yahoo! Sports that the 39.6 percent tax rate Pacquiao would face if he were to fight again in the U.S. makes a fall bout in Las Vegas "a no go."

Promoter Bob Arum is hopeful of arranging a fifth match between Pacquiao and Marquez in the fall, potentially on Sept. 14. Arum's preference is for the fight to be at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which is his company's home base.

But Arum and Koncz say Pacquiao is balking at the additional money he'd lose to the government if the fight were held in Las Vegas. Arum said Pacquiao would not have to pay taxes if the fight takes place in casinos in either Singapore or Macau.

"Manny can go back to Las Vegas and make $25 million, but how much of it will he end up with – $15 million?" Arum said. "If he goes to Macau, perhaps his purse will only be $20 million, but he will get to keep it all, so he will be better off."

So not only does the US lose money on lost tax revenue from Pacquiao's earnings, there will be fewer dollars spent on hotel rooms, airfare, gas, food, hookers, arena rental, television advertising, yada, yada, yada.

Way to go, Obama voters!

You wrote it, you voted for it, now you get to suffer the consequences of it..

Some key Democrat supporters of Obamacare are starting to realize something-it's a lousy piece of legislation:

Powerful Democrats who helped write and pass Obamacare subjected the new law’s chief  administrator to withering criticism at a Senate hearing yesterday. Gary Cohen, the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, testified before the Senate Finance Committee, and the Democrats on the committee—from its Chairman Max Baucus to Senators Ron Wyden, Bill Nelson, and Maria Cantwell—tore into him. Kaiser Health News has more:

Wyden pressed Cohen to help find ways to resolve a glitch in the law which may result in the denial of federal assistance to millions of Americans of modest means who could be priced out of family health coverage at work….

“We’ve got millions of people—working-class, middle-class people—who are going to be pushed into a regulatory health coverage no man’s land,” Wyden said. “They are unable to afford the family coverage through their employer and ineligible for the subsidy that could be used by dependents on the exchange.”

And that’s just one senator. Each had his or her own complaints about different parts of the law’s implementation, from its elimination of funding for insurance co-operatives to the failure to meet important deadlines. The criticisms came fast and furious:

“You are overwhelmed by the details and technology, I get that point…. It seems as if the agency is taking pages out of the law,” she [Cantwell] said….

“The people of Florida are going to suffer,” he [Nelson] told Cohen. “I want someone to be held accountable for this.”

The about-face of these Democrats is a phenomenon worth pausing over. Many formerly supportive constituencies have grown wary of Obamacare in recent weeks as we’ve learned more about the effects it will have on the health care system. But these Senators’ 180-degree turns are something more severe.

The fate of the Democratic party in America over the next decade is tied to Obama’s healthcare reform. If it is seen to be a success, America could trend Democratic for the foreseeable future. If it fails, liberalism as we’ve known it will take a massive hit. But, so far, support for Obamacare has been waning instead of waxing. Even a recent piece by Talking Points Memo that placed the blame for Obamacare’s potential failure on Republicans noted that the law’s unpopularity with the public at large was the number one threat to its success. Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put some distance between themselves and the ACA.

We don’t blame them for trying, but it may be a futile effort. For better or worse, their fates are now tied to that of Obamacare.