And since when do the rich and powerful get to make...sm

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

The fact is, you don't understand Kyoto at all do you? It's just another reason to hate Bush and it has to be so because someone says it is so. Not only is Kyoto suicidal to any economy, the whole premise was based upon what amounts to pushing paranoid stupidity. I mean, how laughable is it to pretend that miniscule amounts of CO2 from human breath, from Dr.Peppers and Hummers give humanity more power over weather than the huge natural CO2 levels and the extreme effects of the sun? And to fight this myth, we need a price-doubling energy-banning treaty? Grrr. What a LOL!

Fact is, there's just no such thing as global warming. Today, over 40% of US states are in cooling trends. The 1930's US decade remains as warm as any since. And no US year is warmer than 1934. Even the 1922 world record for highest temperature is still held by Libya. So forget about the global myth.

Second, no weather chart in the world has ever been able to show a parallel relationship between increases in human CO2 and increases in the regional temperature. NONE. Even in Los Angeles, where large CO2 increases still produce 2004 temperatures 3.5 degrees cooler than the highs of the mid 1950's. So forget about linking man and the CO2 myth as well.

The only proven link between man and climate is in $green$ frauds, where most environmental claims are likely as corrupt as any UN oil-for-food scam.

Recently, it was revealed the UN's lead member used falsified data to hype his claim of the 1990's as the warmest in the last 1,000. As it turned out, this study, although frequently used by the media and UN to accuse human influence, was never peer-reviewed by anyone - until now.

And once it was, the study was rapidly debunked by at least 4 mainstream science publications for it's numerous errors and gross miscalulations that made his wild claims impossible to replicate. So the warmest and coolest years over the last 1,000, still remain the Medieval Warming Period(1000-1400) and the Little Ice Age(1500-1850).

So gt, be careful what you wish for. Bush was not the only President to not sign Kyoto. For good reason. You didn't give one cogent reason in your argument about the effects Kyoto would have on economy, especially our economy. But then, maybe you were just looking for another reason to blame Bush when the economy was TRULY in the crapper.

Pat had better tell them to get their bankruptsy papers turned in before Oct. 17.

Once powerful Christian Coalition teeters on insolvency
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
� October 8, 2005

The Christian Coalition, the onetime powerhouse of the religious right founded by Pat Robertson, is struggling to stay afloat.

The group�s annual revenue has shrunk to one- twentieth of what it was a decade ago � from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to $1.3 million in 2004 � and it has left a trail of unpaid bills from Texas to Virginia. Among the creditors who have sued the coalition for nonpayment are landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and at least one former employee seeking back pay.

It has even come to this: The company that moved the group out of its Washington headquarters in 2002 went to small-claims court Friday in Henrico County trying to collect $1,890 that remains unpaid on its three-year-old bill.

It is the latest in at least a dozen judicial collection actions brought against the coalition since 2001. The amounts sought by creditors total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The reasons for the group�s decline are legion, say supporters, critics and experts who have followed its trajectory. Among them are the loss of key leaders, including Robertson, who resigned as president in 2001; alleged mismanagement by his successors; the cyclical nature of politics; and bitter infighting within the organization and with other political players on the religious right.

CHRISTIAN COALITION TIMELINE

1988 After Pat Robertson�s failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he turns to Ralph Reed � a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right � for day-to-day operations of the coalition founded in 1989.

1997 Ralph Reed leaves the coalition and later sets up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

2000 The coalition, which had been based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, moves to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

2001 Robertson resigns as president, turning over the reins to Roberta Combs, right, who, within a year, closes the Washington office and moves the group to South Carolina. Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including suppliers of services for its 2002 �Road to Victory� rally in Washington.

2004 In a fiscal report to South Carolina, the coalition claims revenue of $1.3 million and expenses of $1.5 million, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

�Their future is really bleak,� said Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has followed the Christian conservative movement for years. �The Christian Coalition is a shell of its former self.�

In one sense, the group is a victim of its own success, Rozell said. It is widely credited with helping Republicans seize control of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000, but with those goals achieved, it has lost much of its reason for being.

�These types of opposition groups tend to do really well when the other party is in power � especially, for a religious right group, when the folks in power are Bill and Hillary Clinton,� Rozell said. �But when Bush is in the White House and the Republicans control Congress, the need for a Christian Coalition as a counterweight to established power just isn�t that great.�

Coalition officials insist everything�s fine. As if to underline the point, last month they announced the hiring of a new executive director, Jason T. Christy, the 34-year-old publisher of The Church Report, a national news and business journal for pastors and Christian leaders.

�The Christian Coalition is going to be around for a long time,� said Roberta Combs, the group�s president. �I really believe that with all my heart.�

The coalition arose from the ashes of a failed 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination by Robertson, the Virginia Beach-based founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

To run the group�s day-to-day affairs, Robertson brought in Ralph Reed � a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right.

The coalition mobilized millions of conservative Christians with its voter guides � pocket-sized candidate scorecards distributed in churches.

Reed left the coalition in 1997 and set up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. He has also become a central figure in the American Indian casino gambling scandal surrounding indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The coalition hit its zenith in 1996, when it pulled in a record $26 million in revenue. By contrast, in its 2004 annual report to the South Carolina secretary of state, the group reported $1.3 million in revenue and $1.5 million in expenses, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

Based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, the coalition moved to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2000. Its Chesapeake landlord sued the group in 2001 for $76,546 in back rent, in a case that is still open in Chesapeake Circuit Court.

Within months of the move to Washington, 10 black employees filed a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging that they were forced to enter the office by the back door and eat in a segregated area. The coalition settled the suit in December 2001 for about $300,000, according to several published reports.

That same month, Robertson announced his resignation as president, saying he wanted to spend more time on his broadcast ministry and Regent University, the Christian school he founded next door in Virginia Beach. He was succeeded as president by Combs, head of the coalition�s South Carolina chapter, who closed the Capitol Hill headquarters in November 2002 and now runs the group from an office in Charleston, S.C.

On its Web site, the coalition still lists a Washington post office box as its mailing address, but it no longer has an office in the capital. It employs a lobbyist who works out of his home.

It was the move from Capitol Hill that left an unpaid bill resulting in the claim against the coalition Friday in Henrico County. The coalition is contesting the claim.

Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including the mailing companies Pitney-Bowes and Federal Express. The group has also been sued by suppliers of audio, lighting, exhibit construction and other services for its 2002 �Road to Victory� rally in Washington, which featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Robertson and now-indicted House leader Tom DeLay.

Even the coalition�s longtime Virginia Beach law firm, Huff, Poole & Mahoney, has joined the chase. The firm secured a $63,958 judgment for back legal bills in 2003 that resulted in a garnishment of the group�s bank account and a partial payment of $21,136. The firm has retained a South Carolina attorney to try to collect the rest.

One of the coalition�s most costly legal battles was a 2002 blowup with Focus Direct Inc., a San Antonio direct-mail company that sued the group over a major fundraising campaign that went sour. The case dragged on for two years. Combs said it was settled for $200,000.

One of the coalition�s co-defendants, Northern Virginia fundraiser William G. Sidebottom, declared bankruptcy as a result. His attorney, Kevin M. Young of San Antonio, said it was a messy case.

�My father was a preacher, and I became aware of an old saying: 'There�s no politics like church politics,�� Young said. �This is an example of that. On the outside, everybody�s making a happy face, but behind the curtain, it was pretty unseemly.�

And then there�s family politics.

Combs hired her daughter Michele as communications director and Michele�s husband, Tracy Ammons, as a Capitol Hill lobbyist. When their marriage dissolved into a nasty divorce and child-custody battle, Ammons was fired.

He then sued the coalition for $130,000 in unpaid salary, accusing his mother-in-law of �personal animosity and malice� arising out of a desire to break up the marriage.

Explaining in an affidavit how he went months without a paycheck, Ammons said: �I believed that � I could trust my own mother-in-law.�

In another affidavit filed in the Ammons case, Tammy Farmer, who worked at the coalition as a bookkeeper in 2001, said she found the group�s financial affairs in disarray.

�I witnessed a very consistent and chronic pattern of Roberta Combs intentionally refusing to pay valid debts, salaries and accounts for no discernible reason,� Farmer said.

As the overdue bills piled up, Farmer said, telephone service would be cut off occasionally and vendors would refuse to do further business with the coalition.

Farmer said Combs frequently told her, �Don�t pay � they�ll never sue.�

Debt is nothing new for the coalition, Combs said Friday.

�In 1999, when I came into the national organization, it had debt,� she said. �I had to do a lot of creative things. It has less debt now than it had then.�

The Ammons case is in arbitration, but fallout from it continues. Arlington County Circuit Judge Joanne F. Alper imposed $83,141 in sanctions against Ammons and his attorney, Jonathon Moseley, for improper and frivolous pleadings. Both declared bankruptcy as a result.

The coalition�s attorney, Brad D. Weiss, moved last month to withdraw from the Ammons case, citing an �irreconcilable conflict� among himself, the coalition leadership and its board.

Meanwhile, two other attorneys, H. Jason Gold and Alexander M. Laughlin, who had been representing the coalition in the Ammons bankruptcy proceedings, moved to withdraw as well. Their reason: The coalition had failed to pay them.

News researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this story.

Since when is it UnAmerican to want to know the TRUTH? Why are you people so ANTI-TRUTH? Wouldn't surprise me if this administration goes down in history as much more corrupt than Nixon.

In the middle of a "war"??!! Bush should be protected because we're stuck in HIS war that HE started based on HIS LIES? At the very least, it would show the entire world that not ALL Americans condone lying, attacking and occupying sovereign nations for no reason. I personally hope they FRY him and hold him and all those involved in his administration accountable for every single EVIL thing they have done.

Your theory that we shouldn't do this while we're in the middle of a war is like the guy who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he's an ORPHAN.

Whatever happened to "The truth will set you free"? Why are you people HATE the truth so much?

Did George Bush serve his country??????? I'd say Obama served his country right on our shores by working with the impoverished in Chicago. GW wouldn't dirty his hands and neither would McSame.

McWayne looks like a corpse with too much makeup on. One heartbeat away from the presidency? JC...............It is God's will we are in Iraq? W?

Okay, this is the one area Democratics leaders always try to mislead the American public on:

The rich get major tax breaks.
The rich get all of the Bush tax cuts.
The rich pay no taxes.

Of course they never want to explain what an unproportional percentage the wealthy in this country pay to taxes. Now to the FACTS from the Department of the Treasury:

The latest data is from the 2002 taxes. The following incomes split levels from the IRS are (% of total individual income tax in parenthesis):

Top 1%: above $ 285,424 (33.71%)
Top 5%: above $ 126,525 (53.80%)
Top 10%: above $ 92,663 (65.73%)
Top 25%: above $ 56,401 (83.90%)
Top 50%: above $ 28,654 (96.50%)
Bottom 50%: below $ 28,654 (4.50%)

The President's Tax cuts actually increase the burden on the wealthy while providing greater relief to the bottom 50 (who are not contributing proportionally to the federal coffers).
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Office of Public Affairs
March 2, 2005
FACT SHEET: Who Pays the Most Individual Income Taxes?

The individual income tax is highly progressive � a small group of higher-income taxpayers pay most of the individual income taxes each year.

� In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.

� The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group�s tax share has grown faster than their income share.

� Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.

The President�s tax cuts have shifted a larger share of the individual income taxes paid to higher income taxpayers. In 2005, when most of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect (e.g., lower tax rates, the $1,000 child credit, marriage penalty relief), the projected tax share for lower-income taxpayers will fall, while the tax share for higher-income taxpayers will rise.

� The share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers will fall from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent.

� The share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers will rise from 32.3 percent to 33.7 percent.

� The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers falls by 27 percent as compared to a 13 percent decline for taxpayers in the top 1 percent.

Summary of Federal Individual Income Tax Data

Being so hateful and against Hillary all these months (and for Obama), after finding this article I now am rethinking my decision as to why I thought he was the better of the two.

I was a bit alarmed last night when during the debate Obama said that people who earned $97K a year are not part of the middle class and therefore should have their payroll taxes raised. Good grief, if this guy gets in the White House, hide your wallets.

If Obama thinks someone making $97K a year is in some way "rich" and not part of the middle class, I hesitate to think what tax hikes he has in store for people who make $250K or more.

I worry when I find myself agreeing with Hillary, but I found myself nodding when she responded by pointing out that in some states such a salary is definitely middle class, and that in New York school superindents, school principals, fire department chiefs, etc., etc. earn more than $97K and yet certainly can't be considered "rich."

Mike Griffith
------------------------------------------------------------
"Maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world. . . . I feel it to be my duty to add . . . a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public
service. . . ." -- John Adams, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1797