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When President Bush announced his economic stimulus in January, he bragged that his package was the “right size” and would “boost” the economy. It sure has led to “higher consumer spending,” but not where Bush had probably hoped. The adult pornography industry reports that has seen a huge uptick in business thanks to Bush’s package.

Of  course, this is also a great opportunity to bring back one of my favorite videos from ht

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Sadly, its one of our own that has come up with one of the most ludicrous amendments to what is already seen by many as one horrible package of legislation.

It’s none other than Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that has developed the language that would essentially open the door to online merchants like Ebay, Amazon, Google Checkout, etc. reporting all of their transaction activity to the government.

First of all, it’s important to note that this provision was packaged in the Housing Bill, which has absolutely nothing to do with online merchants. The provision was buried amongst 600+ pages of legislation, making it more likely to be overlooked by tired Hill staffers. For those who haven’t read the language, here it is (source):

Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card. A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years.

It’s quite clear to see the many problems that could be created if this piece of legislation was enacted.

Of course, after this was exposed, Kate Szostak, a staffer on the Banking Committee quickly tried to kill any doubts and/or concerns people had with the legislation:

“This is not a controversial provision or a new one. Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have supported it for months, and it has been included in the Administration’s budget proposal for years. This provision simply requires banks–not small businesses–to report sales transactions to the IRS each year and to merchants at the end of each day. It makes the tax system fair for everyone, without burdening small businesses and without putting consumers’ privacy rights at risk.”

With all due respect to Kate, this is indeed a very controversial provision that could greatly effect how business is done online.

For example, let’s say I sell 500 widgets on Ebay every month and at the end of each month, $20,000 or so is transferred into my bank account. Stop. That is basically what is going to be reported to the IRS and filed away under your EIN or SSN and it should be no surprise that they are going to be there at the end of the year waiting for you to pay taxes on it.

However, if you’re a business owner, there is much more to this equation than the IRS would be seeing. Nowhere in this reporting would Ebay or the IRS have any idea how much each of these widgets cost you. Sure, you might have had $20,000 transferred to your account, but what if you had to spend $19,500 on acquisition and shipping of the widgets?

This number has to first be deducted from the $20,000 before any accurate representation of income can be generated. When you tack on other things like operating costs, it’s even easier to see how the IRS is going to have skewed numbers.

I’m sure many of you are now asking, so what, you’ll report all of this on your tax forms and pay taxes based on that.

The reality is that even if this is the case, with the IRS having all of this data, they are going to be looking harder than ever for anyone that is cheating the system. Any discrepancy on either end could potentially throw up a red flag and lead to an audit. No matter what criteria they create, there is always going to be a discrepancy in numbers, simply because each small business operates in a different way, having different pricing structures, sales models, operating costs, exposure, etc.

With this legislation, I don’t see how the IRS would be able to operate without a major expansion, and that’s just to cover the oversight of this data. There are many other arguments that people have brought up over this legislation, including privacy concerns and other important logistics, but for some reason, some of our elected officials don’t want to bring this up for more debate and are hoping to end discussion of this in the next 48 hours.

So, that’s where we come in and help disseminate information exposing America’s #1 R.I.N.O., Senator Chuck Grassley.

Here are some other bloggers that are also covering this topic, and have made excellent posts.

http://techliberation.com/2008/06/23/senate-housing-bill-to-require-collecting-of-online-payment-information/

http://blogs.courant.com/on_background/2008/06/credit-card-tracking-slipped-i.html

http://www.infowars.com/?p=2785

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/housing-bailout-bill-new-provision-report

http://osispeaks.com/

http://fetchingjen.blogspot.com/

http://www.oregonconservative.com

http://www.conservativerecord.com

It looks like the Democrats decided to go a bit too far this time, trying to slip in some last minute provisions into the mortgage bailout bill that had absolutely nothing to do with mortgages. Here is just a taste, but check out the rest of the story at the link below:

“This is a provision with huge reach, and was slipped into the bill this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout, that are used by many online businesses.”

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FreedomWorks interns at their finest, showing the DC and the country what grassroots activism is all about (@ approx. 2:00 into the video). Watch out Chris Dodd, not only will ethics investigators be breathing down your neck, but you’ll also have to deal with the 5′10″, 180lb. Panda.

More coverage of the Dodd/Countrywide Scandal:
Commentary: Be honest, we all wish to be VIPs
Major Networks Avoid Dem Senators’ Countrywide Loan Scandals
UPDATE 1-US Senate presses ahead on housing, delay rejected

Odds are, if you’re a commuter, there is one thing that is more painful these days than any traffic jam - gas prices.

Obviously, you’re not alone when it comes to resenting these extremely high fuel costs. However for most folks, it’s just assumed that there is nothing that they can do to lower these costs.

For some, people have changed their routines to make their drive times as efficient as possible. For others, they have decided to take public transportation to work instead of driving. Then there are those who simply want to avoid the stress and cost altogether and give up driving completely.

It’s not just a small handful of people who are making these various adjustments to save a buck either, just check out these statistics from CNN.com:

The Department of Transportation said Monday it had seen the sharpest monthly drop in driving since it began keeping records. In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March of 2007.

I have no doubt that when the data is released for April and May, the number of miles driven will continue to decline significantly.

While I think it’s great that Americans are driving less, there are many who simply can’t make these adjustments, whether that be due to location, schedule, etc. What about these people? How do they fight the pain at the pump?

The truth is, the American people DO have the ability to lobby their members of Congress to fight more aggressively to reduce the price we pay at the pump.

Just today, a new website was launched serving that very purpose - giving Americans the ability to sign a petition that urges Congress to suspend the federal gas tax, increase American oil production, and expand U.S. refineries.

If you’re tired of high gas prices, and want those you have elected to take action, you should sign this petition.

I’m confident that this petition will take off soon, and hopefully, instead of Congress spending hours questioning oil executives, they will use their power and creativity to pass legislation that eases gas prices immediately.

It seems like $300,000,000,000 is the magic number these days in Washington.

First Congress wanted to allocate $300billion for a mortgage bailout, and now they want allocate another $300billion of YOUR money to subsidizing farmers and a variety of other state pet-projects.

Even though President Bush had promised a veto on this legislation, the House continued to charge ahead at full speed, passing the Farm Bill and all the pork attached.

From CNN.com:

“This bill has been under consideration for a long, long time, and yet still we have earmarks that have been ‘air dropped’ into the legislation,” said Arizona GOP Rep. Jeff Flake.

So what exactly is included in this package? Here is just a taste:

The bill also contains a few home-state projects, including tax breaks for Kentucky racehorse owners, extra help for farmers in Hawaii and Alaska and dollars for salmon fishermen in the Pacific Northwest.

Sadly, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In the coming days, I’ll try to get a more complete list of some of the additional pet-projects that are included in this enormous package, as well as who requested them.

Unfortunately, the vote in the House was 318-106, which means that there is already enough likely-’yays’ for a veto override. However, if 28 of the 100 Republicans who voted for the Farm Bill would grow a pair and focus on principle, and not the outcome in November, then maybe people would start to see the Republican Party as one that is actually unified behind a set of core values.

Welcome to campaign 2008.

For most up-to-date post: click here

I read an interesting op-ed today in the Washington Times titled “Child Rapist” by Horace Cooper, a Senior Fellow at the American Civil Rights Union.

The op-ed essentially went over a case that was recently heard before the Supreme Court, Kennedy v. Louisiana, and asked:

who should decide the punishment for a crime, the legislature or the courts? In particular, when determining what crimes merit the death penalty, should state governments have a say or should this power be left to judges?

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the State of Louisiana was being challenged by Patrick Kennedy, a man who was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter. It’s important to note that before he was sentenced, a plea deal was on the table that would have removed the possibility of execution.

Kennedy declined the plea bargain and went to trial. He was found guilty and was sentenced to death.

After Kennedy’s sentence, his legal team used the Eighth Amendment as a backbone for their appeal. They argued that sentencing someone to death for something that didn’t result in the death of the other party was in fact cruel and unusual punishment.

While his legal team saw it that way, Kate Bartholomew, a New Orleans prosecutor saw things from a different perspective, arguing in a CNN.com article:

A lot of people think there should not be the death penalty [in this case] because the child survives…In my opinion the rape of a child is more heinous and more hideous than a homicide.”

The Supreme Court had already ruled on a similar case in 1977, Coker v. Georgia, where they argued that the death penalty an excessive punishment for someone convicted of rape.

Even though the Court ruled that the death penalty wasn’t an appropriate form of punishment for rapists, in 1995 the Louisiana Legislature passed a law that would allow executions for those convicted of raping a child under the age of 12.

Knowing the previous ruling of the Court, the State of Louisiana argued that Coker v. Georgia only applied to adults, since it was only those circumstances that the Court considered.

This is something that the Court is going to have to consider in their final decision for a variety of reasons.

Cooper correctly points out:

Tragically there are many voices in the criminal-law community who argue that these types of crimes — due to their very nature — perpetuate when the victims end up engaging in similar behavior.

Considering that very point could create a tough decision making process for the court.

However, I think it is those complexities that highlight what Horace Cooper is trying to get at – these should be decisions that the States should be responsible for making, not the courts.

While I may have differing opinions in terms of what should constitute the death penalty, I completely agree with Cooper’s argument.

Members of the legislature are elected to represent the best interests of the people in their districts (or in this case, parishes). It’s their job to make the laws that they feel are appropriate for certain actions, based on what their constituency would want.

Making these determinations shouldn’t be the role of the higher courts. Their sole purpose should be to enforce the enacted laws, not try and create new ones, or new precedent based on one case.

Cooper concludes:

Upholding Kennedy’s sentence is clearly of first primacy, but the Roberts Court should go further. It should overturn Coker and thereby clearly return to state governments the power to determine what punishment fits the crime.

Absolutely!

Even though I don’t necessarily think that the death penalty is the best sentence (I’m more of an eye-for-an-eye guy, so he’ll get what he deserves in prison) that should be a decision each state makes, not a small group of ideological judges.

If the Court can successfully reject this case and over-turn Coker, I think we’ll be one step closer to having our government operate in the vision of our founding fathers.

I commend the American Civil Rights Union for speaking up about this case and clearly laying out what is really at stake here. If the court chooses to side with Patrick Kennedy and uphold the Coker decision, a wide window will be open for groups like the ACLU (which clearly opposes the letter of the law) and other organizations to challenge the laws that were made by the legislatures, that were elected by the people.

If our elected officials don’t even have authority in terms of making laws based on the concerns and wishes of the vast majority, can we still call this a democracy? Sure, we elect them, but if their decisions mean nothing, what good are they?

I’ve made many posts here regarding my opposition to an alarming trend that I’ve seen growing rampantly here in Washington, a trend that all Americans will pay for, but only a few will reap the benefits of - government bailouts.

While the unorthodox treatment that Bear Stearns got from the Federal Reserve a few weeks ago was enough to cause short-term chaos in financial markets across the globe, the more troubling bailout, without a doubt, is one aimed at the mortgage markets.

Anyone who has received some sort of formal education understands that you shouldn’t borrow more money than you can afford, and more importantly shouldn’t sign a contract where you aren’t 100% confident of the specified terms and/or rates.

Even so, the government has felt the need to take responsibility for the actions of these irresponsible borrowers, and seems to think that using taxpayer money to stabilize these loans is going to be the best approach to preventing more long-term economic turmoil.

While I haven’t seen seen one good bailout proposal, I’m pleased to see that there are concerned citizens who are rallying against this showing of fiscal irresponsibility by both a select group consumers and the government.

What’s even more pleasing is that many of these people who are rallying against these bailouts aren’t usual suspects.

The impressive part of this movement isn’t the families with the 2.5 kids, white picket fence in the suburbs, etc, who have made smart financial decisions and are usually the first to rally against foolish government intervention. Sure, many of them are on board with opposing these bailouts, as they should be, but the really impressive thing is the number of renters who are following what is happening and realizing that they are getting screwed more than any other group of people.

A few weeks ago, FreedomWorks launched a site called AngryRenter.com, with the goal of bringing attention to how renters are being affected by these ridiculous bailouts.

Keep in mind that renters, for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to buy homes. For many, they are waiting for the market to get better, for others they are waiting until they have more money and for some, they just don’t want to deal with the responsibility.

(here is a great video by Peter Suderman summing things up)

Regardless of their rationale, is their any argument that can justify sticking the burden of covering these bad mortgages on people who don’t even have them? There is absolutely no argument for that.

Of course, the early results of AngryRenter.com clearly show that this is now an issue that has upset many, and if Congress wants to prevent their less than stellar approval rating from reaching new depths, they might want to pay attention.

In only a few weeks, AngryRenter.com has already gathered nearly 12,000 signers to their petition, and I don’t see any reason why that number wont grow exponentially in the near future.

I urge everyone to check out the site, sign the petition and even forward it on to your friends.

It’s tough to get Congress to pay attention to even the biggest issues sometimes, but when you present them with tens of thousands of names, they usually wake up… at least the good ones do.

Just when I thought that there was no Alaskan who could be less of a fiscal conservative than Senator Ted Stevens, the pitfalls of another Alaskan, Congressman Don Young are brought back into the spotlight, this time with the likely prospect of intervention from the Department of Justice.

Without a doubt, the actions of Congressman Young are far more appalling and apprehensible than any of the ridiculous earmarks that Senator Stevens has tried to push through Congress.

Here is a brief recap from CNN.com illustrating the problem Congressman Young now finds himself facing:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Senate voted Thursday to seek a federal investigation into a 2005 earmark on a highway funding bill that was altered after Congress approved the measure but before President Bush signed it.

Earmarks are requests for money by a specific legislator, usually for her or his constituency, added onto often-unrelated government spending bills.

The $10 million earmark — originally designated for improvements to Interstate 75 in Lee and Collier Counties in Florida — was changed to put the money into building an interchange in Lee County, an apparent violation of congressional rules.

The staff of Rep. Don Young made the changes, the Alaska Republican’s spokeswoman said Tuesday, saying the staff had “fixed” a mistake in the original bill.

A proposal put forward by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, to direct the Justice Department to investigate passed the Senate by a vote of 63-29.

Without a doubt, Congressman Young is in deep, and he’s known this for awhile.

Unlike bad earmarks from Senator Stevens that were for Alaska, this earmark was a pet project for Daniel J. Aronoff, a well known real-estate developer that helped Congressman Young raise $40,000 just a few days before the measure was introduced on the house floor.

It’s sad to think that even after all of these scandals, there are still Congressman (particularly Republicans) who are willing to do whatever they can to add to their war-chest. He wasn’t the first and probably wont be the last.

What’s even more appalling, is the response that one of Arnoff’s consultants gave the New York Times:

“We were looking for a lot of money,” said the consultant, Joe Mazurkiewicz. “We evidently made a very good impression on Congressman Young, and thanks to a lot of great work from Congressman Young, we got $81 million to expand Interstate 75 and $10 million for the Coconut Road interchange.”

Aside from this being a bold reply, I think it makes it quite clear that Congressman Young probably wasn’t the only member of Congress helping Mr. Arnoff get the projects that he needs.

Looking at what is being presented, and Congressman Young’s continuous “no comment” replies, I don’t see any way that he will get out of this. In fact, even though I am a Republican, if he is found guilty, I hope that the he has the book thrown at him. I’m guessing Senator Coburn probably agrees with me as well.

Congressman Young isn’t a rookie to Washington. In fact, he’s been here longer than I have been alive. As any member, hill staffer and lobbyist knows, there is a simple procedure in place to correct a bill that has already been passed by the House and Senate.

It’s called a “concurrent resolution.”

This isn’t an unknown process, in fact, I would argue that it is probably one of the most widely used processes amongst both bodies, especially when there are bills that have multiple earmarks and/or provisions. Regardless of how his staff tries to sugarcoat this, the procedure for correcting these bills is known and there is no way around the process, regardless of chairmanships and/or status.

Of course, one cant help but notice the timing of this.

This was something that happened in 2005, but for some reason it took over two years for major action to be requested? The Democrats have obviously been waiting and holding onto this one, and their timing is perfect.

For weeks, there has been virtually no talk of Republicans on the news, simply because John McCain has had smooth sailing after Mike Huckabee finally left the race. This means that all of the political coverage has been of Senators Clinton and Obama beating each other up, which has played a toll on mobilizing Democrats.

However, now the Republicans are back in the hot seat, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Democrats are able to use this a catalyst to raise a good deal of money for their candidates.

As unfortunate at it is, I think that this could very well be the straw that breaks the back of the NRCC… they just are having a horrible year.