9
Jun
Mary Winkler is now serving 60 days for killing her husband.
This was an awful week for the justice system if you ask me.
Wesley Snipes got busted by the IRS for refusing to pay taxes for six years. Now, every sane person knows you have to pay your taxes in the United States. Some people pander to those not quite so sane, like Douglas Rosile and Eddie Kahn, who convinced Snipes not to pay his taxes. The result for Snipes is pending prison time. Possibly lots of it. Or, maybe even worse, a HUGE fine. Maybe even both. So, what to do? Play that race card of course. Now, ya gotta understand first of all how the IRS works. It’s mostly computerized. It compares what you made via what others say they gave you, versus what you claim you made. If they don’t jive too well, you might have an issue. Nowhere in those computer programs is there a block that asks what your skin color is. It will take the IRS about 30 seconds to prove that in court. Snipes apparently is no dummy, what he’s actually using to play the race card here is that Kahn and Rosile are white, and didn’t get charged with what he got charged with. The IRS’s answer will be rather simple in that area as well, each person is handled individually. Just because Rosile and Kahn haven’t been charged YET doesn’t mean they won’t be. All the IRS has to do is charge those two and poof, that angle is gone. My guess is those charges are on the way.
Now, the bigger issue to me is every time someone makes one of these bogus accusations as Snipes has, it belittles those that really do suffer at the hands of racism. “Playing the race card” any more just makes it sound like whoever it is knows they’re guilty as hell and are trying to deflect their guilt. And, that’s exactly what Snipes is doing here. According to him, he’s not guilty as charged because those who helped him commit the crime haven’t been charged. In other words, he’s admitted his guilt. If he’s guilty as charged, he should make restitution. That’s how the law is supposed to work. If he’s guilty, it really has nothing to do with whether or not Rosile or Kahn are as well. For all we know, Rosile and Kahn could have been milking Snipes for all kinds of fees telling him he doesn’t have to pay taxes. And, then, paying their taxes. And, for flagrantly abusing the race card, I think Mr. Snipes needs to spend a little time in the pokey to think a lot harder about the big picture and a lot less about the bogus reality he’s apparently surrounded himself in.
8
Jun
While the rabid liberals spend their time typing their fingers till they’re falling off on their blogs and stuff coming up with more juvenile inane ways to slander the President of our great country, that said President of our great country is obviously getting the last laugh:
That’s right Kos and all, while you’re wasting your life away blogging incessantly about Bush, Bush is apparently having a good time scoring some suds and down-blouses.
A common practice of insurance companies is giving discounts to people with good credit scores. The adverse way of looking at it is they penalize people with bad credit scores. A couple of people were unhappy that their credit scores were used to rate their insurance and sued. It made it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sided with the insurance companies. Some people weren’t too happy with this:
In a not-so-thoughtful analysis, Justice David Souter offered one line of reasoning to rule in favor of insurers: Credit score penalty notices would become so commonplace that they would “go the way of junk mail.” Really, he did write that…..
Birnbaum and others have long argued that consumers should know exactly how much the penalty is, and what the ideal credit score is, so they can check for credit report errors and aim for the ideal score. That was the argument put forth by plaintiffs in the Safeco and Geico cases.
But Geico offered a more tortured, and ultimately more persuasive, argument. It said that it could calculate insurance premiums based on a “neutral” credit score — in other words, what consumers would pay if credit scoring was never used at all. Only consumers who paid more than this “neutral credit score” rate suffered an adverse action and should be notified, the firm argued. The judges agreed….
In this case, our nation’s highest court of referees missed a foul call. The tortured logic of protecting us from junk mail (why start now?) is comical. Allowing insurance companies to set the bar for when adverse notices are sent is akin to giving the fox the keys to the chicken coup…..
Not all states allow insurance firms to consider credit scores. The practice is banned in California, for example. Call your state legislator and ask him or her to support a ban on the use of credit scores to set insurance rates in your state. Congress could amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require more adverse action notices by insurers, but that€™s a pipe dream at the moment…..
I got all kinds of issues with Bob Sullivan’s gripes.
- What he seems to want is for the insurance companies to notify people when every credit score is evaluated. That’s not the intent of the law. The law is that an ADVERSE result be reported. What Safeco and Geico stated was that they do that. What they don’t do is report is the people who are not penalized. That’s the intent of the Fair Credit Laws in the first place. Using Sullivan’s logic, every single time someone accesses my credit score, not even accessing my credit history, they would be required to send me a notice. As Souter noted, people would be inundated with credit reports. That’s just not necessary and achieves nothing. All I want to know is if there is something on my credit that would cause a bad report. If I get an adverse report from someone checking it, that tells me there is something bad on my report. If I don’t get penalized, then there is nothing bad on my report. That part can just be assumed by the average consumer. There is no reason to assume otherwise.
- Sullivan cites California as a state that does not allow credit scores to affect premium rates. Look at the lowest rates in California and compare them to the lowest rates in states that do not bar that practice. I’ll bet I pay a LOT less in auto insurance than anyone in California does for equal coverage.
- What Sullivan is proposing is my auto carrier be compelled to carry people with bad scores in the same pool as I am. All that does is penalize those who have good credit scores. It’s a very simple fact that people who scam insurance companies most likely are in financial trouble. People in financial trouble most often have very bad credit scores. Adversely, people who are financially responsible and are not in financial trouble do not have bad credit scores and do not usually scam insurance companies. Being as we are less likely to scam an insurance company, we are less likely to file a claim, people who file fewer claims should be rewarded with lower premiums. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it should stay.
- He singles out Souter as if Souter had the only vote, but he didn’t. In most cases all NINE Justices supported the decision. Some dissented on varying interpretations of the reasoning, but when nine lawyers agree on something, there must be some reason to it.
This just strikes me as more of the personal responsibility issue I’ve been harping on. People who have bad credit scores KNOW they have bad credit. What Sullivan wants is basically to eliminate using credit scores to rate insurance premiums. In other words, you can rip off financial institutions all you want, but those financial institutions will be forced to treat you exactly as anyone else. That’s not the way I see things. Some people accept the responsibility of doing everything they can to be financially responsible. Some people have to be forced to be financially responsible as they don’t value others’ stuff. If something like cheaper insurance helps compel them to behave responsibly in our society, so be it.
Now, don’t take this as a blanket statement that I’m bought and sold to insurance companies. I’m not. I think they’re the biggest part of our health care crisis. However, I think the Supreme Court got this one right and that’s the only point I’m arguing here.
Every time the G-8 convenes, a bunch of people feel compelled to protest. More often than not they don’t know why, they just know they have to. Like you know when you have to poop, pee, and eat, these people know they have to protest. Case in point about how they don’t even seem to know what they are protesting against:
All I’ve got to go by is the video and pictures of what they are doing. I don’t care enough to research any further. However, it is apparently obvious to me this year they are protesting clowns. Now, that’s all fine and good, and people have the right to protest anything they want, but last I heard, the G-8 supported the rights of all clowns in the world to look clownish any time they chose so long as they didn’t ask the non-clowns of the world to loan them billions of dollars they never intended to pay back.
Once again, Nancy Pelosi has pinned herself into a corner she can’t get out of. By making ethics a purely partisan issue over the last couple of years, she’s got a real problem on her hands now. Subsequently, she allowed a horrible bill to fly through Congress yesterday. In essence, they want to kick Jefferson out of Congress.
I got a REAL problem with that. Actually, more than one.
- Although caught with his hands in the cookie jar, he’s not been CONVICTED of anything. Nothing. Nada, Zip. In this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty. Although the implications of his actions and the guilt of those around him are enough to suggest voters elect someone else, they are not enough IMO to justify legal actions. Congress should know better than that.
- This opens the door to very simply framing a legislator and kicking them out based on the publicity of the situation. I don’t like that at all. In the future, that’s all you’d see in the news media is one inflammatory accusation after another in an effort to get members of the other party kicked out.
- By casting judgment, for the second time in one day Congress has usurped the Judicial branch. To me that’s scary folks. A lot of people liked accusing Bush via the Patriot Act of Big Brother tactics. But, Congress passing the laws and enforcing them as well IS Big Brother.
- I see this as an effort by the Democrats to appease the criticism that they were going to clean house moreso than a concentrated effort to solve the core problems. Once William Jefferson is gone and forgotten, doing what they have so far, it’s back to the same old business as usual. That’s not fixing anything.
- I see this as a quick and easy way for the Democrats to get a thorn out of their side. Congressmen in trouble score all kinds of headlines. Former-Congressmen in trouble barely get a mention. Given the ethics platform Nancy Pelosi ran her slate on, and the way she ran it, I want Jefferson in her face until she actually does something about the ethical problems that she accused only one party of participating in. Too many people apparently bought that argument. So, those same people should hold her feet to the fire and demand reforms that she’s promised but never delivered on.
Immediately following the official indictment of William Jefferson, Congress reacted by passing House Resolution 451:
Resolved, That whenever a Member of the House of Representatives, including a Delegate or Resident Commissioner to the Congress, is indicted or otherwise formally charged with criminal conduct in a court of the United States or any State, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct shall, not later than 30 days after the date of such indictment or charge–
(1) empanel an investigative subcommittee to review the allegations; or
(2) if the Committee does not empanel an investigative subcommittee to review the allegations, submit a report to the House describing its reasons for not empaneling such an investigative subcommittee, together with the actions, if any, the Committee has taken in response to the allegations.
The bill passed pretty much unanimously. However, I got a real issue with this legislation. It’s not terribly difficult to understand I hope. It goes something like this. It is the job of the judicial branch of our government to investigate crimes, it is the job of our legislative branch to make laws and collect and spend taxes. I don’t see what effect at all empaneling a subcommittee to do what the judicial branch is already doing will accomplish. And, what’s worse, I see where one of these subcommittees could actually conflict with and possibly interfere with the judicial efforts. In this case, there is apparently an ongoing investigation into the actions of William Jefferson that could possibly extend to other members of Congress. It strikes me that if a member knew they were being investigated, and managed to get on one of these subcommittees, they could very possibly interfere with the investigation itself by having the subcommittee make recommendations pointing blame elsewhere. Even though these subcommittees hold no legal power, they could very easily sway public and/or public sentiment. Which in a lot of cases, can interfere with the investigation itself.
This is feel-good reactionary piece of legislation that I don’t like. Although they probably would have faced some criticism, in my opinion, public statements condemning the actions of William Jefferson were all that was necessary. Once the actual facts are completely revealed, and of course, Jefferson is proven guilty, then the actions he took to circumvent the law should be examined by Congress and some action taken to prevent the same actions from occurring in the future.
Saw these “disturbing” pics of Lindsay Lohan and friend all over the news today:
To which Foxnews ran this caption:
Somehow I just don’t think the sins of smoking a cigarette quite compare with playing with large pointy knives while drunk. Could just be me, but I think a little political correctness could have been left out of this otherwise meaningless story.
Here’s the scuttle making the rounds right now:
Michelle then ties in the recent polls that show the Democrats losing huge amounts of popularity. As if they’re connected issues.
In my opinion, they are, but not for the same reason Michelle leads one to believe. Although Nancy Pelosi did oust Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee, much to the chagrin of the Black Caucus. She did so due to the very obvious legal conflict an investigation into a Congressman presiding over the Justice Department had. It was just TOO obvious. Especially more so given her harping over the culture of corruption of the Republicans. If she hadn’t removed Jefferson, the FBI would have been looking at a lot more people than Jefferson alone. That could have been very bad. However, putting Jefferson on Homeland Security looked just as bad to the common person. Why would someone caught with the hands in the till be rewarded with a powerful committee assignment? The culture of corruption is biting Nancy in the ass. As it should. However, apparently, she’s got an even bigger problem on her hands because apparently the Black Caucus doesn’t have a problem living in a culture of corruption. So, does Nancy continue to harp on Republicans and run the risk of alienating blacks, or does she drop the corruption and run the risk of looking as bad, if not worse, than Delay? This ethical conflict isn’t going away any time soon, and Nancy has pinned herself into a corner I don’t see how she can get out of. She can’t accuse a black of being corrupt, she can’t accuse a Democrat of being corrupt. And, we all know, all people of all races can be. I wouldn’t want to be Nancy right now.
Someone said “pride goeth before the fall”, but in this case, the fall is already happening.
When a person is sure that burning stuff makes the environment better, they need to be locked up. These people are nuts. My gut instinct is they just enjoy burning things, and look for a reason to do it.
