Now they call it crony capitalism and untold millions have been made by those in the know.
A case in point is Richard Blum, billionaire husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California:
When the housing market crashed in 2008, Blum raked in $108 million selling foreclosed homes the government bought.
In 2012 Blum invested $1 million in green energy company Amyris which only weeks later received $24 million from the Department of Energy.
While Feinstein was the chair of the Senate Military Construction Subcommittee, $1.5 billion was given to defense contractors, resulting in a $5-$10 million profit for Blum.
This brand of "crony capitalism" may be legal, but it's not right.
But of course, with a government as big and out of control as ours, it could not be any other way.
Big government naturally creates a pool of big spending politicians who tax us in every way possible, and then use that money to make their cronies richer.
That’s why you and I must fight to give the power and the money back to the people, and take it away from tax-and-spend politicians and their cronies.
And why we must say no – no – no to any further expansion of government.
Sincerely,
Gary Paumen, President
National League of Taxpayers
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.
At the root of the chaos in the Middle East and here at home are governments that respect no limits on their exercise of power. Public officials — who are supposed to be our public servants — routinely behave as if they are our masters. They reject the confines of the Constitution, they don’t believe that our rights are inalienable, and they fail to see the dangerous path down which they are leading us.
It is a path to an authoritarian America, predicted by the British writer George Orwell in his dark and terrifying novel “1984,” in which governmental power was fortified by fear at home and war abroad.
[Editor's Note: The above brief letter demonstrates the legal, unethical "bribery" conducted daily by our "mis-representatives" in action. I have always said, "If you want to get rich, get elected!", and the above is one small example of government corruption that we ignore. THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate) provides a myraid of ways to steal from their campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to their seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.