Sail as is say, not as I sail… in Rhode Island
UPDATE — It took 48 hours of bad press, but finally John Kerry told the AP Tuesday afternoon that he will pay boat taxes as if the vessel were moored in Massachusetts. END UPDATE
Liberal Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry — whose mega-rich wife is an heir to the Heinz food fortune — recently took possession of a new yacht that he had built in New Zealand. The 76 foot vessel, named Isabel, is moored in Rhode Island, where her designer lives and works.
But Kerry neither works nor lives in Rhode Island. He lives in a very expensive townhouse in Boston's exclusive Beacon Hill, vacations on the equally posh Nantucket Island, and works in the District of Columbia.
So why would Sen. Kerry have the boat domiciled in Rhode Island? Taxes.
Rhode Island has no sales tax on purchases such as a yacht and no excise tax that must be paid yearly.
According to media reports the, sales tax at a bit over 6%, would total over $450,000 if the boat were moored in Massachusetts instead of contiguous Rhode Island.
And the Bay State's first year's excise tax on the boat would be about $70,000.
Those amount to a tidy little saving in excess of half a million dollars that Sen.Kerry side-stepped just by keeping his pricey purchase over the line in The Ocean State.
But, the next time he moors Isabel at a Nantucket berth, the tax collector just might show up with his hand out, palm up. At least we can hope.
A couple of broadcast reports the Kerry Yacht Fiasco and interesting. One is WBZ-TV, Boston, and the other isFox News'
US Says Repeal ObamaCare 60% of US voters want Obamacare repealed — “the second straight week that support for repeal of Obamacare is at 60% or above,” according to the Rasmussen Report.
And...
36% Oppose repeal.
45% Strongly Favor repeal.
27% Strongly Oppose repeal.
Plus…
62% believe Obamacare will increase the federal budget deficit.
58% think it will raise the cost of healthcare.
51% say the new law will hurt the quality of healthcare.
(Rasmussen 5-31-10)
Obama’s disaster: Unemployment Gallup Daily tracking finds that 20.3% of the U.S. workforce was underemployed in March — a slight uptick from the relatively flat January and February numbers.
A rise in the percentage of part-timers wanting to work full time (from 9.2% to 9.9%) is responsible for the March increase in underemployment.
Unemployment saw a slight, but insignificant, decline in March.
Six in 10 underemployed Americans are not hopeful they will find work or move from part-time to full-time work in the next four weeks. That translates to 12% of the workforce that is both underemployed and not hopeful they will find their desired amount of work.
The lack of change suggests that underemployed Americans anticipated long-term difficulties in finding work well before the administration's formal announcement was made.
The Gallup report was released April 1, 2010.
US 47-50% Pro-Con On Obamacare "Americans are now about evenly split in their reactions to the healthcare bill's passage: 47% consider it a good thing and 50% a bad thing. The divided, but slightly negative, assessment is similar to what Gallup found in recent months prior to the final House vote," the polling company reported today, Monday 3-29-10.
Poll: Kill ObamaCare A week after the House passed ObamaCare, 54% of voters favor the law’s repeal, including 44% who Strongly Favor repeal, according to the latest Rasmussen survey.
The poll also shows that 42% oppose repeal, including 34% who Strongly Oppose repeal.
Rasmussen said these number are “virtually unchanged” from last week’s poll results.
84% of Republicans favor repeal.
59% of Independents favor repeal.
25% of Democrats favor repeal.
1% of black Democrats favor repeal.
55% say the plan will increase healthcare costs.
17% say it will reduce healthcare costs.
49% say it will reduce care quality.
60% say it will increase the federal deficit.
The Rasmussen president Scott Rasmussen said: "The overriding tone of the data is that passage of the legislation has not changed anything. Those who opposed the bill before it passed now want to repeal it. Those who supported the legislation oppose repealing it."
Remember Scott Brown? That vote didn’t count either In voting for Scott Brown to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts voters demonstrated:
1. Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country,
2. Antipathy toward federal government activism, and
3. Opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals.
Those are the conclusions (1-22-10) drawn from a Jan. 20-21 poll sponsored by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health, and released by The Post, which says the statistics show “how dramatically the political landscape has shifted during President Obama's first year in office.”
63% of Massachusetts’ special-election voters said America “is seriously off track,” the newspaper reported. “Nearly two-thirds of Brown's voters say their vote was intended at least in part to express opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.”
Among all Massachusetts voters — including those who voted for Brown’s opponent, state attorney general Martha Coakley — 48 percent oppose said they oppose Obama’s healthcare proposals while 43 percent support them.
Among Brown's supporters, however, eight in 10 said they were opposed to Obama’s healthcare proposals, and, 66 percent of them strongly opposed them.
President Lincoln would have cried In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared and prayed at Gettysburg Pennsylvania that "...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
But a little over 200 years later, 219 self-important Democrats in the House of Representatives voted FOR Obamacare; this despite the fact that the majority of Americans had repeatedly told them that they did not approve of the proposed legislation.
Before the House vote was taken, 56% of American voters said they opposed Obama's plan while 40% approved of it. And for six months before the House vote, all major national polls demonstrated close, but consistently negative, public attitudes of both Obamacare and Obama himself, to say nothing about House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Reid.
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CNBC’s Becky Quick interviewed IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller at the Fortune Brainstorming Conference in Aspen and managed to get a few candid executive insights into how at least one business leader feels about the Obama administration — calm expressions of guarded anger that one rarely hears from a CEO in public.
Most of Quick’s interview of Diller was about the future of an open Internet and the recovery of advertising — which is robust — across all media. Then, at the end of the dialogue, Quick pushed into another area.
Quick: The administration probably didn’t help travel with some of the things they were saying.
Diller: The administration didn’t help a lot of things; but the statements of the administration, the president, against conventions and things like that were, uh, kind of rank. I mean on any level. I mean they were simply a kind of sensationalist obvious target. The truth is conventions are great for cities, they’re great for hotels; they’re great for, you know, a convention comes to town everything picks up. So, I don’t know how you go against conventions….
Don’t damn the whole industry. Las Vegas was so cratered by that, I think, reckless rhetoric… It still is hurting our conventions…
Quick: Does the administration recognize that; there have been some apologies. What is the relationship between business and the administration right now?
Diller: Not very good.
Quick: What else besides the travel polices.
Diller: Everybody knows. You don’t want to hear it from me. Tension between business and government is healthy. There is nothing terrible about that. That’s a healthy thing. But, when in fact there is, or there appears to be — and in this case there is fire and smoke — where there appears to be a consistent slamming of business in so many different areas I think, then, it is unhealthy.
Here’s a link to the interview; it runs 3:20.
 Image source: "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," Warner Brothers, 1948 In two weeks, the most destructive forces in America, the two house of Congress, will begin what they euphemistically call their “Summer District Work Period.”
This year, from Monday August 9, through Friday, September 10, the two chambers’ members will prowl their respective districts ostensibly to take the aggregate temperature of the people they purportedly represent. Of course, the “Summer District Work Period” is really just an high-sounding name — as so many things are in Congress — for an excuse to escape the oppressive heat and humidity that characterize The District’s Dog Days of Summer, as if no one else in the country has hot, muggy Augusts.
Quizzically, we muse why now would Congress care what their constituents think; they haven’t paid attention to the polls, letters and editorials for years. After all, Congress is so damned smart they don’t need no stinking input from their constituents.
Which, of course, reminds us of this classic sequence from John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Think of Humphrey Bogart as the American people and the Mexican banditos, pretending to be Federales who “don’t need no stinking badges,” as a deceitful Congress.
Thank God for the “Summer District Work Period,” a full month when Congressional banditos can do less harm to the American people and our economy with their destructive deficit spending practices.
Gallup reports today that former President Bill Clinton currently is “more well-liked by Americans than both of his successors.”
- 61% view Clinton favorably.
- 52% view Obama favorably.
- 45% view former President George W. Bush favorably.
Ratings for both Clinton and Bush have improved with age, and this is the first time in Gallup polling that Clinton’s favorable rating exceeds Obama’s.
Clinton’s rating has increased considerably since the 2008 presidential election campaign, rising from 52% in August 2008 to 61% today.
Bush’s current 45% favorable rating is 10 points higher than in March 2009, when Gallup last asked about him, and is his highest since January 2007.
“Obama’s 52% favorable rating now ties his lowest since he entered the White House. Obama’s favorable rating first fell to 52% in March, and has since stayed in that range,” Gallup reports.
Get the full Gallup report here.
“Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low,” The Washington Post reported today. The assertion resulted from a joint Post-ABC News poll of likely voters in November’s mid-term elections.
The poll showed that “nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country. Furthermore, “a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.”
Additionally, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that “there is no doubt there are enough [Congressional] seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.” Here’s the full transcript.
And that’s supported by what voters think of Congress. The Post-ABC poll shows “about seven in 10 registered voters say they lack confidence in Democratic lawmakers.” Republicans get similar negative ratings.
And the bad gets worse: 36% of likely voters said they have no confidence or only some confidence in Obama and Congressional Democrats and Republicans.
Independents are even more disillusioned: about 66% say they are dissatisfied with or angry about the way the federal government is working.
Barack Hussein Obama continues to chart his own course, ignoring public sentiment and the well-being of Americans and the nation as a whole.
A day after Rasmussen told us (see below) that the majority of Louisianans’ support offshore drilling, the public opinion research company further reports that “60% of voters nationwide support offshore oil drilling … down from 72% in March just after President Obama lifted the longtime ban on offshore drilling and prior to the eruption of the Gulf oil leak. But 22% now oppose this kind of drilling, too. Another 18% are undecided.”
Rasmussen also reports today that “49% of Americans favor continued deep water drilling despite the oil rig disaster that caused the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico … [while] 31% oppose such drilling and 20% more are not sure about it.”
“Even as oil washes up on their shores from the still-spewing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, 79% of Louisiana voters believe offshore oil drilling should be allowed, and nearly as many support deep-water drilling,” according to today’s Rasmussen Reports. “Just 15% do not believe offshore oil drilling should be allowed.”
Yet BHO again demonstrates his arrogance and disregard for the people most immediately affected by his misguided policies, in this case the six-month ban on deep water drilling.
The Washington Times’ Deroy Murdock wrote, disturbingly, yesterday that “as a self-proclaimed ‘citizen of the world,’” BHO should have welcomed international offers of assistance in cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico disaster, but he didn’t.
Was it national pride, over-confidence, or protection of his union base of support that motivated his refusal to accept outside expertise?
Murdock conveys a little-known fact that at least 12 countries, plus the United Nations, offered “skimmer boats and other assets and experts to prevent the oil from destroying dolphins, crabs, oysters and this disaster’s other defenseless victims.”
First on the scene to offer assistance were the Dutch — who knows better how to control an unruly ocean environment. Three days after the April 20 BP explosion, “the Dutch offered to sail to the rescue on ships bedecked with oil-skimming booms. They also had a plan for erecting protective sand barricades.”
But, “No, thanks,” BHO said. Americans don’t need foreign help. Why, you ask?
Murdock explained that the “Jones Act [of 1920] requires that vessels operating in American waters be built, owned and manned by Americans. Some US ship owners love this protectionist measure. So do maritime labor unions. When it comes to confronting unions, Mr. Obama rarely crosses that line.”
So, there you have it. For the sake of misplaced pride and loyalty to the socialist labor movement in the US, hundreds of thousands of Americans will suffer by losing their jobs and perhaps their entire way of life.
Read the full story by Deroy Murdock in The Washington Times.
Obama’s his knee-jerk, emotional order to halt production at 33 Gulf of Mexico oil operations once again demonstrated his inability to understand and manage complex organizations, largely because of his lack of executive experience.
On Thursday May 27, Obama announced the production halt. Ten days later on June 8, his Administration said he would rescind that order in lieu of new safety regulations.
Obama obviously gave no thoughtful consideration to the wide and deep social and economic impact his actions would have on the tens of thousands of Gulf-area residents whose incomes are directly tied to the oil industry as employees or indirectly as suppliers and service providers, an employment expanse that extends all the way to the local diner and barber shop.
The sequence of headlines and news stories tells the story of a President who can neither shoot straight nor get his action-sequence in order, preferring the ready-fire-aim method.
Here are the news stories that chronicle each of Obama’s amateurish thresholds regarding the BP tragedy.
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Financial Times
May 27, 2010 — President Barack Obama ordered all 33 deepwater oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico to halt drilling and extended a moratorium on new deepwater wells….
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Dow Jones
June 1, 2010 — Oil and gas companies on Friday began halting exploratory drilling in the deepwater of the US Gulf of Mexico following a federal government order. Meanwhile, they are bristling at a six-month exploratory drilling ban and its probable effects on the industry and the U.S. economy….
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Houma Today
June 1, 2010 — Experts are working to get a handle on the potential economic impact of President Barack Obama’s order last week to halt exploratory deepwater drilling for six months.
Estimates differ, but lost jobs are a certainty for Gulf Coast states, particularly Louisiana.
“The immediate impact is a lot of people are going to be put out of work,” said Loren Scott, an economist and professor emeritus at LSU who studies the state and local economies.
Thirty-three rigs are now exploring in deepwater areas of the Gulf. It’s typical for 200 to 280 people to work on each of those rigs, Scott said. Simple math puts the number of people who could be directly affected between 6,600 and 9,240.
And Scott estimates that for every job directly involved oil-and-gas drilling and production, at least three people are employed in related fields such as manufacturing or transportation. That would mean 19,800 to as many as 27,770 jobs could be impacted across the region….
♦
The Wall Street Journal
June 8, 2010 — The Obama administration, facing rising anger on the Gulf Coast over the loss of jobs and income from a drilling moratorium, said Monday that it would move quickly to release new safety requirements that would allow the reopening of offshore oil and gas exploration in shallow waters….
Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, and their chart (above) is a graphic representation of those results.
Barack Hussein Obama took office with much of the nation in a state of political euphoria. Nearly everyone loved the guy. Nobody knew what he could or would do, but he preached, literally, a good game. And the nation was sick of Iraq and the perceived culprit for creating the Iraq situation, W.
Then BHO took the reins of office, and the populace had behavior as well as statements to assess. Yet, from that lofty perch, no one event appears to have had a major negative or positive impact, just a steady erosion of public confidence.
Approval swooned from 68% to 46% while disapproval steadily climbed from 12% to 45%.
The confluence of public opinion numbers— representing opposite attitudes — shows a substantial hardening of negatives as well as a softening of positives. This has created a shrill public voice and one that speaks of a more polarized electorate than any other we remember having seen in many decades.
Instead of being a net plus for the American consensus, creating a kinder, gentler and more tolerant nation, BHO has stimulated distrust, anger and acrimony.
(If you go to the Gallup site and click the chart, it will display the numbers for each date through the full measurement range.)
Since Barack Hussein Obama sees fit to ignore Memorial Day Ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, we bring you to President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 address at the national military shrine. Below are the first two paragraphs of his moving comments, and a link to the Heritage Foundation website for the full text.
Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again. It’s a day of thanks for the valor of others, a day to remember the splendor of America and those of her children who rest in this cemetery and others. It’s a day to be with the family and remember.
I was thinking this morning that across the country children and their parents will be going to the town parade and the young ones will sit on the sidewalks and wave their flags as the band goes by. Later, maybe, they’ll have a cookout or a day at the beach. And that’s good, because today is a day to be with the family and to remember.
The full Reagan speech may be read here.
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