Day: January 24, 2009

GOP Plays The Partisan Card

On Day one the GOP has been playing the partisan card, the dipsticks started early in the Obamna admin and it could quite possibly come back and bite them in the ass.  The BS antics like those of Vitter and De mint on the confirmation of Clinton as Secretary of State was nothing but a pad to their resumes for the next political cycle.

The last national election has shown just how out of touch the GOP is with the American people, that is basically been reduced to a Southern, rural regional party of white people and these type of antics against a popular president is not helping them find a new direction and a new hook for support.  If Obama stays calm and cool as he has in the past, then this could alienate the GOP even further from the peoplke and give the Libertarian Party a shot in the butt and make them more mainstream.

The partisanship game that the GOP is starting to play is a dangerous one at this time.  Look at Rush, his lame ass comments on Obama h is costing him markets and listeners.  If the GOP wants to find a new direction and a new voice for the party then they need to tread very lightly in these early days of the new adminstration or they could quite possibly be lost to history.  (We can only hope.)

CITI Wants More—And More And……

These guys never stop begging for cash …….

Citigroup’s new chairman says that if the US government took bad assets off bank balance sheets, banks might be able lend more money.

He acknowledged that Citi was not lending as aggressively as in the past because of “balance sheet issues”.

A shortage of credit is a major factor behind the economic slowdown.

“We can off-load bad assets in return for making commitments to be more robust on lending,” he said.

But he denied a quid pro quo: “It’s not a situation of, you do this for me, and I’ll do that.”

He indicated that the bank could be interested in a government program offered to the sector but Citigroup would not approach the government directly.

Mr Parsons said the money could come from the $700bn financial rescue fund authorized late last year.

Citigroup has already received $45bn of government funds as part of last year’s banking bail-out.

When does it end?  When will CITI finally have enough funds to be solvent again?  How much do we, as taxpayers, need to throw at CITI to help them out of their problems?

Look Where Your Money Goes

Look America!  This is where your tax money goes when it is used in the bailout.

John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive officer ousted yesterday, spent $1.2 million redecorating his downtown Manhattan office last year as the company was firing employees, a person familiar with the project said.

Thain hired Los Angeles-based decorator Michael Smith, chosen by President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to redecorate the White House, CNBC reported. Thain paid Smith $837,000 and his purchases included $87,000 for area rugs, $25,000 for a pedestal table and $68,000 for a 19th century credenza, CNBC said.

Thain, 53, oversaw the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America Corp. last month, and took over the bank’s wealth management and corporate and investment banking divisions. Merrill’s $15.4 billion fourth-quarter loss forced Bank of America to seek additional aid from the U.S. government, which last week agreed to provide $20 billion in capital and $118 billion in asset guarantees.

The antiques Thain reportedly purchased will probably hold their value over time, said Clinton Howell, a New York dealer in English furniture.

In light of Merrill’s $56 billion in losses from subprime loans and the credit crisis, $1.2 million spent on antiques hardly seems worth getting outraged over, Howell said.

See they care less about what you think as long as you keep feeding their greed and their desires for your tax dollar.  When will the American people say enough is enough?  They will but it will be way too late.

But That Is Not What The Ad Says

If You watch the Tube at this time of the year, when the tax season approaches then year will see the ads for the Turbotax which promises to find you all the deductions you will need to help you get a bigger refund than you would have had without it.

But wait a minute!

Geithner, President Obama’s choice to run the U.S. Treasury and spearhead America’s recovery from its financial crisis, is well on his way to being confirmed after the Senate Finance Committee voted 18-5 Thursday to forward his nomination to the full Senate.

But the endorsement came only after he underwent embarrassing scrutiny for his failure to pay all of his income taxes in 2001 and 2002 — a mistake he blamed on an easy-to-use computer income tax program used by 18 million taxpayers a year.

Geithner said he used the popular software program TurboTax to complete his income tax forms in those two years, and he failed to include self-employment taxes in his federal returns.

He said that, to his recollection, the program did not prompt him to report income and pay self-employment taxes.

“I mistakenly believed that I was meeting my obligations fully, including self-employment taxes, but I did not prepare my returns in a way that caught that mistake initially,” Geithner told the committee, adding, “these are my responsibility, not the tax software responsibility.”

But TurboTax itself says the program is designed for average taxpayers and prompts everyone to report any additional income or wages earned through self-employment.

“The way TurboTax works, we ask you your personal information up front” and “walk you down an interview path that asks you the source of your income,” said Scott Gulbransen, a spokesman for TurboTax. Even if you fill out a W2 tax form from a primary employer, “once you’re done with that it will ask you if you had other sources of income,” he told FOXNews.com.

I guess that we will not see this in any of the Turbotax ads on the boob tube anytime soon eh?  Not a shining endorsement of the product huh?