In yet another fantastic display of hypocrisy, the liberal mainstream media spent the week attacking Governor Mitt Romney for having a 15% tax rate.  Since the media is loath to engage in any actual investigative journalism when it comes to the Democrats, I decided to do a little of my own.  Here’s what I found.

Start with Senator John Kerry who is among the 400 richest Americans thanks to his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s, inheritance.  Their last publicly released tax returns in 2003 revealed that they paid a rate of 13.4% on a declared income of $5.5 million. This from the man who, just last year, tried to avoid half a million dollars in taxes by anchoring his yacht in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts. Estimates pin Kerry’s net worth somewhere between $700 million and $3.2 billion compared to Romney’s lower net worth of $202 million.

Take a look at former Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards’s 2003 tax returns, and you’ll find that he paid an astonishingly low rate of 5.1%.  Seems a bit low for a man with a net worth hovering around $54.7 million.

But, of course, Kerry and Edwards’ income tax rates were protected under lock and key by the mainstream media during the 2004 presidential race against President George W. Bush.   Speaking of Bush, you’ll also never hear anyone mention the fact that he paid a rate of 27.7% in the same year.

Tax rates aside, in yet another attempt to make something out of nothing, the media has been reporting relentlessly on Romney donating millions in cash and stocks to the Mormon Church, as if tithing to one’s church is somehow a negative.  Thanks to donations like Romney’s, the Mormon Church is able to sustain a large philanthropic network and send young men on two year missions that provide extensive humanitarian aid to a countless number of people in need.  If you call that bad, I’d hate to see what you call good.

This much I can assure you—Romney’s millions donated to the Mormon Church did far more good than the $353 Al Gore gave to charity in 1997 or the $0, $820, $175, $2,039, and $0 Senator Kerry gave between 1991 and 1995.  Contrast that to the $28,236, $31,914, and $31,292 George Bush gave between 1991-1993 when he was a mere private citizen.  That is the real story that you will never hear.

Instead, you will hear report after report on Romney’s tax rate and his donations to the Mormon Church.  You’ll hear about how the Democratic Party is the party of the little man, and the Republican Party is the party of the selfish, rich fat cat.  That’s what the Democratic Party and the mainstream media want you to believe.

So before you buy into the Left’s big tax fable like the Occupy Wall Streeters did, take a good hard look at what you’ll never see reported—the facts.

SOURCES:

KERRY & EDWARDS TAXES

BUSH/CHENEY TAX RETURNS

CHARITABLE GIVING

That’s the latest bombshell revelation from investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s sensational new book, Throw Them All Out.

According to Schweizer, after the bailout bill’s passage, Warren Buffett sat down and wrote then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson a four-page private letter laying out a plan to clean up the toxic assets plaguing numerous financial institutions.  Buffett proposed something he called a “public-private partnership fund.”  For every $10 billion the private sector invested, Buffett said the government should put up $40 billion.

After Paulson’s exit, incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tweaked the plan and rolled it out in March 2009. But according to quarterly reports from Buffett’s holdings company, Berkshire Hathaway, between the time the billionaire crafted his plan and Geithner adopted it, Buffett quietly purchased 12.4 million shares of Wells Fargo stock and 1.5 million shares of U.S. Bancorp. Once the government unveiled its “Public-Private Investment Program,” bank stocks jumped, resulting in large profits for Buffett.

How much Buffett profited is hard to calculate, since there’s no way to know what his purchase price was. But prior to the government adopting Buffett’s plan, Wells Fargo had been trading at roughly $20 a share. In the weeks after Geithner’s announcement, the stock jumped to $30 a share. Likewise, U.S. Bancorp went from $8 in February 2009 to more than $20 a share by May.

Schweizer’s revelations contradict the image Warren Buffett has worked hard to create as that of a folksy, grandfatherly figure who stays above the political fray and rarely gets mired in the muck of partisan politics. Indeed, Throw Them All Out uncovers other alarming acts of apparent crony capitalism performed by the so-called “Oracle of Omaha.”

For example, Schweizer examines Buffett’s intense private lobbying efforts and deftly-timed stock buys that leveraged TARP bailout monies to create up to $3.7 billion in windfall profits for Berkshire Hathaway.

In September of 2008, Buffett invested $5 billion in the over-leveraged investment house of Goldman Sachs, having obtained impressive terms: Berkshire Hathaway would receive preferred stock with a 10% dividend yield, and the option to buy another $5 billion at $115 a share.

As the political debates surrounding the proposed $700 billion TARP bailout bill heated up, Buffett maintained an appearance of naivete, an “aw shucks” shtick that deferred to the judgment of politicians.  “I’m not brave enough to try to influence the Congress,” Buffett told the New York Times.

Behind closed doors, however, Buffett had become a shrewd political entrepreneur. With his Goldman bet in place, the billionaire exerted his considerable political influence in a private conference call with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. During the meeting, Buffett strongly urged Democratic members to pass the $700 billion TARP bill to avert what he warned would otherwise be “the biggest financial meltdown in American history.”

Buffett had a strong financial interest in the bailout’s passage, says Schweizer. “If the bailout went through, it would be a windfall for Goldman. If it failed, it would be disastrous for Berkshire Hathaway.”

Yet Buffett had little reason to worry; his insider political connections afforded him two guarantees. First, many members of Congress were themselves investing heavily in Berkshire Hathaway throughout the bailout talks–a move that may simply have been a good investment in an unsteady time, or else a shrewd exploitation of unique information. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), for example, snatched up $130,000 worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock.  Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) also bought shares in Berkshire Hathaway, as did Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who purchased half a million dollars’ worth just days after the Wall Street bailout bill was signed.  Second, Buffett knew he had an ally in the surging Barack Obama. Buffett had backed Obama in 2008. And as Obama has himself conceded, “Warren Buffett is one of those people that I listen to.”

When the TARP bailout passed, Berkshire Hathaway firms received a staggering $95 billion in bailout cash from U.S. taxpayers. In total, TARP-assisted companies made up almost a third (30%) of Buffett’s entire publicly disclosed stock portfolio. The payoff:  by July 2009, Buffett’s Goldman bet and his congressional jawboning had yielded profits as high as $3.7 billion.

Incredibly, in a breathtaking public relations move, Buffett publicly complained that the government bailouts had put his company at a disadvantage,  because funders “who are using imaginative methods (or lobbying skills) to come under the government’s umbrella–have money costs that are minimal.”  Rolfe Winkler of Reuters best captured Buffet’s audacity: “It takes chutzpah to lobby for bailouts, make trades seeking to profit from them, and then complain that those doing so put you at a disadvantage.”

Still, despite Buffett’s apparent, and brazen, display of crony capitalism and political manipulation to produce billions in profits, Schweizer says that the most egregious part is that his behavior appears to have been entirely legal. Buffett merely leveraged his unique and powerful political connections to turn taxpayer money into massive private profits.

Now, with the 2012 presidential election right around the corner, Buffett plans to back President Obama again. In August 2011, the two men vacationed together in the plush surroundings of Martha’s Vineyard. Shortly thereafter, Buffett hosted an Obama fundraiser in New York City where contributors spent $35,800 for VIP tickets and the chance to discuss the economy with the Berkshire Hathaway CEO.

If Buffett’s political track record is any indication, his time spent alongside President Obama was an investment intended to yield a high rate of return–at taxpayers’ expense.

I once admired Warren–and told her so. I was a student at Harvard Law School when she was plucked from her teaching job to serve as the congressional “oversight czar” for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In that role, Warren stood out for her unique willingness to criticize Obama administration appointees, notably treasury secretary Tim Geithner, for failing to comply with basic transparency and reporting requirements.

Warren had also been extremely popular among her students–so much so that our graduating class awarded her the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award in 2009, even though she hadn’t taught since the previous fall. I hadn’t had the privilege of being in one of her classes, but I congratulated her on the award, and told her that as a conservative, I felt she was speaking for me, too, in holding the Obama administration accountable.

But something seemed to change once she joined the administration. In September 2010, President Obama appointed Warren to launch the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Warren’s ideas had helped inspire the creation of the CFPB, which had been established by the controversial Dodd-Frank legislation. Republicans objected to the CFPB’s great powers and independence from congressional oversight.

As C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush, noted: “The director of the consumer bureau is independent of both the Federal Reserve, which houses and funds it, and the White House. Dodd-Frank precludes the House and Senate Appropriations Committees from reviewing the bureau’s budget.” The courts were also required by Dodd-Frank to accept the director’s statutory interpretations.

In their zeal to expand government’s regulatory power over Wall Street, the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Obama administration made the CFPB an unconstitutional bureaucratic beast. Warren was clearly Obama’s favored appointee to lead the CFPB, but Republicans made it clear that they would not approve her until the glaring problems with the CFPB’s power and budget were resolved within traditional constitutional limits.

Rather than face a confirmation fight over Warren, Obama made her a special assistant to the president and an adviser to Geithner. Warren ought to have declined the post, as it had been designed to circumvent congressional authority. Instead, she accepted it–and, worse, the former congressional “oversight czar” began to resist congressional oversight, complaining on one occasion that a hearing was cutting into her schedule.

Having begun in Washington as a tough watchdog, Warren soon came to symbolize executive overreach. Democrats are excited to back a candidate who will fight for their belief that redistributive government trumps individual freedom and constitutional limits. That makes her a perfect voice for the Occupy movement, which she claimed to have inspired. Sadly, it also makes her a poor choice to serve in the U.S. Senate.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Tim Geithner’s response to the Occupy Wall Street protestors, emails that show coordination with the media and if this is all part of the end to America’s centuries long prosperity.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Treasury Secretary Geithner on the Occupy Wall Street Movement (4:40 mark)
Wall St. protests continue after arrests
Journolist 2.0: OccupyDC Emails Show MSM, Dylan Ratigan, Working With Protesters To Craft Message
Army of unemployed is now entrenched in U.S.
America Wrongly Thinks Its Prosperity Can’t End

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I wrote two years ago about Chinese students erupting in laughter after Geithner claimed the Administration believed in a strong dollar.

Now he’s getting mocked by the Europeans.

After Friday’s post about the absurdity of Obama sending his Treasury Secretary to lecture the Europeans, you can imagine my great amusement today as I read that the Europeans basically told Geithner to go jump in a lake.

Here are some passages from the Reuters report.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s high-profile trip to Europe left some European officials more dumbstruck than starstruck. …”We can always discuss with our American colleagues. I’d like to hear how the United States will reduce its deficits … and its debts,” Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said somewhat tartly. Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup, was even more to the point. “I don’t think it would be wise for me to report from an informal meeting that we have with the treasury secretary. We are not discussing the expansion or increase of the EFSF with a non-member of the euro area,” he said.

And here is a brief excerpt from the Financial Times.

…some eurozone finance ministers hit back at Mr Geithner’s comments, questioning the usefulness of his visit. “I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the eurozone, that they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion … that they say no straight away,” said Maria Fekter, Austria’s finance minister. Sweden’s Anders Borg said: “we need to make progress, but it’s quite clear the US has a big debt problem and the situation would be better if the US could show a sustainable way forward.”

When the dust settles, though, the fact that Secretary Geithner is getting laughed at and mocked by people in other countries is not that funny. Not because he doesn’t deserve abuse, but rather because the bad policies of the Obama Administration are resulting in genuine hardship and suffering.

And the fact that the Europeans are even further down the path that leads to fiscal crisis makes it all the more tragic. You would think American policy makers would learn what not to do.

While Obama, Fed Chief Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and various other Obama economists, lackeys and socialist cabal members drone on about double dip, or not to double dip, common folks on Main Street understand that there has never been a recovery.

The continuing Great Recession started on Bush’s watch in 2007 and has never ended. Like Herbert Hoover, another Republican President who panicked, and failing Capitalism 101, abandoned fiscal conservative principles, George W. Bush turned to big government to “save us.” And as usual, the more government tries to save us, the worse it gets. So Bush channeled Hoover, starting the bailouts, stimulus, and insane levels of spending and government intervention.

Then, just when you thought it could not get any worse, along came Obama with his “Axis of Evil” game plan. What is the “Axis of Evil,” you ask? It is the principles to which Obama’s life is dedicated: Taxation, Regulation, Government Strangulation, Unionization and Litigation.

Obama is obsessed. He drools and dreams of taxes, lawyers, and unions. He reads his daughters bedtime stories about his heroes — IRS auditors, union goons, and the greatest class action lawyers of all-time. At Christmas, he decorates his tree with IRS tax forms, union labels, and law firm mastheads.

Obama actually believes that unemployment checks and food stamps are economic stimulus, jobs are created by lawsuits and tax money grows on trees. He believes teachers unions educate children (although not his little girls — they are safely tucked away in private school for $60,000 per year). He believes Lincoln saved the union — the auto union, teachers union and government employees union. Obama and Michelle’s favorite song must be “Axis of Evil” sung by Geithner & The Taxes.

Like other big government comrades such as Castro, Chavez, Mao, or that dashing couple that bankrupted Argentina, Eva & Juan Peron, Obama actually believes this stuff. He drinks the Axis of Evil Kool-Aid. Of course it has a union label. Much like Kosher foods that are blessed and approved by a rabbi, Obama’s foods are blessed and approved by the SEIU. His Presidential limo features a bumper sticker that states “Workers of the World Unite.”

Obama’s Axis of Evil has wrecked the U.S. economy from sea to shining sea. This Axis of Evil targeted, demonized, frightened, and punished business owners until there were no jobs. It is this Axis of Evil that turned Bush’s Great Recession into the Obama Great Depression. It is this Axis of Evil climate of fear that has turned this nation into Obamageddon.

Only those who are blind or drink the Kool-Aid can fail to see that America is in shambles, chaos and unprecedented crisis. True unemployment is at Great Depression levels. The Real Estate collapse has surpassed the Great Depression. The stock market is limping along, on the verge of collapse. Consumer confidence, manufacturing, and retail sales are plummeting. Inflation is skyrocketing (on the products that matter — energy and food prices). Banks cannot lend because they are either insolvent or handcuffed by new government regulations. And, our AAA credit rating is gone for the first time in history.

Our national debt goes up $3 million per minute under Obama. In one day under Obama the debt went up $200 billion — more than the entire 2007 deficit under Bush. But have no fear — our President is hard at work on the golf course at Martha’s Vineyard. Rest assured he is burning the midnight oil searching for the solution to save our economy. You just never know what you might find in a golf hole or on a putting green. Perhaps the answer to all our troubles is staring at Obama…in the clubhouse. Thank goodness Obama is on the job!

Obama is a tax stalker obsessed with these Axis of Evil ideas. Taxes and government spending are the twin monsters he turns to in a pinch every time. As he plays golf all over Cape Cod, rest assured he has visions of entitlements and tax fairies dancing in his head. The reason American business is frightened and paralyzed is because Obama’s obsessions (taxes, spending and regulation) and best friends (lawyers and unions) are the mortal enemies of all taxpayers, job creators, investors and small business owners. Obama’s game plan has created a climate of fear, uncertainty and crisis.

But at least Obama got one thing right — there is no chance of a double dip. Not in the middle of this Great Obama Depression. There is no recovery – only debt, depression and disaster. As long as the Axis of Evil reigns supreme, there can be no recovery, no new jobs, no hope or change.

Taxation, Regulation, Government Strangulation, Unionization and Litigation. The Axis of Evil ruins lives, kills jobs, redistributes our wealth, destroys workforce productivity, hinders investment, and weakens heroes of the workforce like kryptonite.

There is nowhere left to hide…except the golf course.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the crumbling “Boehner Plan” in the House, how Obama may circumvent it, and who’s to blame for this mess.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

The U.S. Treasury has less cash on hand than Apple Inc.
3 ways Obama could bypass Congress
They’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

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