Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The Federal ID that Pays Illegal Aliens Billions a Year
Established 15 years ago, the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number [ITIN]
is a seemingly innocuous administrative requirement that the Internal Revenue
Service assigns to anyone who is employed and pays taxes. According to the
IRS website, the numbers are used for federal tax reporting only.
But since ITINs, as they are commonly known, are issued to wage earners
regardless of immigration status, they’ve frequently been abused by the aliens
who hold them.
Although the real estate crisis is fading from our memory, it’s important to recall
that the ITIN was the vehicle used in lieu of Social Security numbers, which then
legitimized the disastrous lending policy of providing home mortgages to
unqualified illegal aliens. With bankers as their willing abettors, and while the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation purposely looked the other way, aliens
took out home loans using ITINs as their major form of identification. Bankers,
only too-eager to accommodate poverty-level applicants with balloon financing
for homes they could barely make the first payment on, raked in big money.
To the bankers, aliens represented the “new market.” Today, five years later,
the nation is still reeling from the avalanche of foreclosures that followed.
For aliens, the ITIN is an extremely useful vehicle. Since the IRS isn’t required
to share its information with any other federal agency, including immigration
authorities, the promise of intra-agency confidentiality allows aliens to file tax
returns without fear of deportation. At the same time, holding an ITIN enables
aliens to authenticate their presence in the United States and prove that they
have paid taxes.
This information could be crucial if Congress ever enacted an amnesty.
The ITIN’s improper use is once again in the news. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, in its recent analysis entitled “Treasury Department Says
Illegal Aliens Collection Billions in Tax Credits,” revealed that according to the
Department of Treasury’s Inspector General, more than $4.2 billion in additional
child credits were paid out in 2010 to illegal immigrants. In 2005, the pay outs
totaled $924 million. This program allows low income earners to claim a $1,000
per child credit. If the household ends up with no additional tax obligation—as
most alien families do not—then $1,000 is paid to them.
Pursuant to the IG report, 72 percent of tax returns filed by ITIN users claimed
this credit compared to just 14 percent of returns filed with social security numbers.
The generous payment of these benefits represents yet another incentive for aliens
to enter, reside and work in the United States without permission.
Providing incentives to aliens, financial or otherwise, is against the law.
The ITIN is a sham that should be eliminated. The federal government knows
that many ITIN users are illegally in the United States. Automatic acceptance
of the ITIN without additional identification is tantamount to endorsing illegal
immigration.
At a time when Congress and the president are struggling to find ways to
cut trillions of dollars from federal spending, and while more than 14 million
Americans are unemployed, it’s unconscionable for the IRS to ignore abuse
of its ITIN program that results in billions of dollars in payments made to
illegal aliens.
November 26, 2011 By Joe Guzzardi
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Costs of the Occupiers
The trash generated by the “Occupy Wall Street” protests keeps
piling up. So do the bills. Liberal media outlets claim the anarchic,
anti-capitalist movement is more popular than the tea party.
But wait until Americans across the country get a full picture of
the costs of the aimless occupiers.
In New York City, government officials estimate the month-long
siege of Zuccotti Park has now imposed $3.2 million in overtime
police costs on the public. On Thursday, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
office pressured left-wing activists to vacate the park for cleaning,
Occupy Wall Street urged sympathizers to flood the city’s customer
services lines: “Call 311 and tell Bloomberg not to evict us!”
In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter told the press that
demonstrators outside city hall have incurred $164,000 in
overtime public employee costs and $237,000 in regular time.
“At the current rate, if Occupy Philly continues to the end
of the month, the city would spend another nearly $690,000
on police overtime alone,” the local NBC affiliate reported.
“Besides the extra police presence being dedicated to the
Occupy Philly protests, other city departments have also
incurred costs.”
In Seattle, police have so far billed $30,000 in overtime,
and the parks department racked up nearly $4,000 in additional
costs related to the protests there. Occupiers have blocked
traffic, assaulted an officer and pitched illegal tents.
Merchants in the area have been hurt as the riff-raff deter customers.
One business owner in Westlake Park, where hundreds of protesters
remain camped out, told Seattle TV station KIRO:
“There’s definitely fewer people you can identify as people out,
just walking through the area.”
Seattle’s pushover mayor, Democrat Mike McGinn, now faces
even greater demands from the insatiable mob — which wants
a “guaranteed parking space near City Hall Plaza that allows
for around-the-clock parking,” “24-hour access to the first
floor of City Hall for restroom access, and a written statement
from the mayor approving the protesters’ long-term occupancy
of City Hall Plaza.”
In Boston, City Council President Stephen Murphy anticipates
a $2 million hit to taxpayers if the protests refuse to
disband by the end of October. The local Fox affiliate notes
the tab represents 8 percent of the yearly budget for police
overtime. “While we’re all sympathetic with our protesters
down there,” Murphy said, “Wall Street isn’t picking up the
tab on this thing. It’s the Boston taxpayers.”
When fiscally conservative tea party activists held protests
over the past two years, they filed for all the required permits
and paid for their own power. Occupy Boston, by contrast, neither
sought nor obtained any proper permits at any level, according to
the Boston Globe. Instead, city and park officials have been cowed
into providing them gratis electricity and camp space lest there
be “conflict.”
Many of these occupiers are primarily occupied as paid
rent-a-mobsters for unions, left-wing think tanks and the
radical Working Families Party. While one collective hand
soaks the taxpayers, the other hand is busy soliciting free
stuff. Occupy Los Angeles activists took to Skype on their
laptops to solicit donations of iPhones and iPads.
Occupy Wall Street members on Twitter organized an ongoing
“#needsoftheoccupiers” drive for everything from batteries
and tarps to “gently used” coats and sweaters, wool socks,
sleeping bags and energy bars. Occupy Austin organizers
publicized their wish list, including a free barbecue grill,
portable toilets, extension cords, a Bobcat forestry cutter
for clearing brush and network cameras for a livestream.
These are not principled advocates
of fiscal responsibility.
They are professional freeloaders.
Unlike tea party activists who focused like a laser beam on
politicians in both parties responsible for redistributing
wealth to Big Business cronies by force, the Occupy Wall
Street movement is everywhere and nowhere. The entitled
Kamp Alinsky Kids are poaching WiFi and trespassing on private
property under the guise of “social justice” but in plain
service of themselves.
Their T-shirts and speeches glorify Marxist radicals Che Guevara,
Emiliano Zapata and Chairman Mao. They lionize convicted death row
cop killer Troy Davis and WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning.
They condemn “Nazi Bankers,” Jews, Fox News, the American Legislative
Exchange Council, Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, the Koch family and
the New York Police Department (“Pigs!”). They promote the illegal alien
DREAM Act and 9/11 Trutherism.
They spout bumper-sticker profanities and inanities: “F**k banks.”
“Unf**k the world.” “Fuuuuu*k.” “Free education.” “Smash nationalism.”
“People not profits.”
They flash peace signs while celebrity supporter Roseanne Barr
calls for beheading financial industry workers and fellow marchers
call explicitly for “violent revolution” or for Obama to
“Send SEAL Team 6″ to Wall Street.
Then they huff and puff (preferably in a creepy uniform chant
they call the “human microphone”) that we just haven’t taken
the time to understand what they’re all about — as they hawk $20
“Eat the Rich” polo shirts and license their protest photos to
Getty Images.
Viva la revolucion! Up with people!
Stop the greed!
(Cha-ching. Cha-ching.)
Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption:
Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies”
(Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies”
(Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
West counters Obama: MLK would not have backed Wall Street protests
By Alicia M. Cohn
The Hill News
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) rejected President Obama’s comparison
between Martin Luther King Jr. and what he called the
“Occupy Wall Street gangs.”
“Martin Luther King Jr. would not have backed these types of
protesters,” West said, noting that he was born and raised in
King’s neighborhood. “First of all, Martin Luther King, Jr.
had a focus, a message. He was divinely inspired. I don’t know
what the inspiration is for these individuals.”
Obama last weekend suggested the civil-rights leader would
have sympathized with the ongoing demonstrations against
Wall Street, indicating both movements sought justice.
West slammed the protest movement as hypocritical and unfocused
in comparison to the Tea Party movement in an interview with
Newsmax published Tuesday evening.
“I think the hypocrisy of this movement is somewhat laughable,”
he said. “[Unemployment] has nothing to do with Wall Street.
It has everything to do with the failed policies coming out of
the Obama administration.”
West said he is wary of the movement because it seems to want
to end capitalism and replace it with something else.
"This progressive movement is really what communists were called
back in the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. We're starting
to really see the face of who liberal progressives are," West said.
“I think there is a danger in the people on Capitol Hill starting
to embrace this movement.”
West's sharp remarks about the movement, which has drawn Democratic
support, follows a week in which the Republican leadership
seemed to tamp down their early criticism of the protests.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to
criticize the movement on Fox News Tuesday night.
“I think people are free to express themselves in this country
on any subject they choose to,” he said. “People can have their say.”
However, West's perspective seemed to echo that of many of the
larger Tea Party-affiliated groups, who have pushed back against
comparisons between the conservative, grassroots movement and the
progressive Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
West, a favorite of the Tea Party, vigorously defended the Tea Party
movement in comparison to the Occupy Wall Street crowds, saying the
comparison was like "a shotgun as opposed to a precision-guided munition,”
with the Tea Party being the more focused weapon.
“When you talk to somebody with the Tea Party, they can tell you what
they want — limited government that’s constitutionally mandated, fiscal responsibility — they also want to see our free market and free enterprise
systems adhered to, as well as our national security,” he said.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
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