Is Ann Kuster Happy We Violated the US Constitution?

Ann Kuster is excited that the House Republicans decided not to change the Senate version of the Violence Against Women’s act.    I’m not sure what the House had in mind but Tax dodger Ann Kuster is happy to assume it’s because they hate women.

What a difference a day makes! On Wednesday, Speaker Boehner had big plans to limit the protections for women who are victims of domestic and sexual violence. Apparently, House Republicans believe that some women – namely lesbians, immigrants and Native Americans – do not deserve equal protection under the law.

Problem.  This bill violates the US constitution in it’s effort to protect women from domestic and sexual violence.

Heritage dissects the details but here’s the synopsis.

The bill would authorize Indian tribal courts to adjudicate certain domestic violence criminal charges against non-Indians and to enter a final judgment authorizing the confinement of convicted offenders. At present, tribal courts cannot exercise that authority because, as the Supreme Court held in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe in 1978, tribal courts lack criminal authority over non-Indians.

Oliphant said that Congress could empower tribal courts to adjudicate criminal charges against non-Indians, but to do so, it must pass legislation giving tribal courts that power. Congress could do that by passing VAWA, but the problem with the Senate version of the legislation is that it violates Articles II and III of the Constitution in the process.

Any Tribal court that tries to exercise this unlawful authority could expect to find itself on the way to Federal Court or even the  Supreme court, complete with all the costs and time associated with such a journey, at the end of which they might find that the White man (and woman) has just screwed them again.

Personally, men who beat or abuse women are at the top of my sh*t list next to people who abuse children.   If there is a hole in the law that allows people to get away with either I’m happy to support legitimate efforts to correct that.  But Ann Kuster (and very likely everyone else cranking out the Democrat fund raising form letter-o-false victory) thinks they just won a battle in defense of women.  A noble cause.   But all congress really did is set a trap.  A trap Kuster is using to bash Republicans and raise campaign money.  And guess what?  Whoever you are, you helped.

But you made a difference. Your voice was heard. Thank you for joining our petition to protect women across America from violence.Today, the House voted to defeat the GOP bill and instead to pass, overwhelmingly, the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act.

Yes we did.

Annie

PS: I hate to ask but we are facing a big deadline tonight, can you chip in a few dollars and help us meet this vital deadline today? (Link removed)

So is Ann Kuster happy we Violated the US Constitution and set a trap for the tribal courts?  I doubt she has the slightest clue. Nor do I think she cares.   She just want’s to hear the electronic clink of digital silver in her little virtual tin cup.

Note: I have not seen the House version.  If anyone has a link, I’d love to know why House Republicans joined the senate in approving this mess.

Annie McKluster Doesn't Pay Her Taxes?

The New Hampshire Young Republicans (NHYR) want to know why Congress-critter Ann McLane Kuster (I prefer McKluster) is worth an estimated $1.8 million dollars but can't manage to pay her property taxes?

“While Annie Kuster pushes a message that we all need to chip in a little extra, she has failed to pay her fair share. Yesterday we realized that a tax-and-spend liberal member of Congress is delinquent on her own taxes. Time and again, Uncle Sam’s cup is passed around and we are told to dig a little deeper. When the cup was passed to Annie Kuster, she didn’t chip in.
...
I can understand if she was late on a payment or if there was just a simple oversight, but this is not a one-time mistake. Kuster has been delinquent 6 times for over $40,000 in property taxes owed to the towns of Hopkinton and Jackson. With a reported net worth of $1.8 Million (Center for Responsive Politics) how can she in good faith and with any level of moral authority ask any more of the American people than she does of herself.

This arrived in my in-box, and I don't have a link or details, so I'm just reporting what I received... but we'll follow up with more information as it becomes available.

Update: As it tuns out the original source of the story was James Pindell at WMUR.

When she was sworn in to Congress in early January, Kuster owed $14,089.32 in delinquent property taxes on her Hopkinton home. She has since made a tax payment and currently owes $6,998.22 in past-due property taxes on that property. This pattern of not paying her taxes dates back to 2010, according to the records. On the property in Jackson, she didn't pay either of the semi-annual tax bills in 2012 and owes $3,851.65.

I guess James Pindell can add "tax collector" to his resume because the morning after his report about the Democrat Rep who "forgot" to pay her taxes Mr. McKluster hopped in the McKluster-mobile and paid some of them (according to the Union Leader...)

Kuster's husband walked into Hopkinton tax collector's office Tuesday morning and paid $7,055 in remaining overdue property taxes on their primary home following a report that they have been consistently late in making such payments over the past two years.

Charles Gangel, the Hopkinton town clerk and tax collector, said attorney Bradford Kuster on Tuesday morning personally paid the remaining bill, which consisted of $6,973 for an overdue payment from last year and $82 in interest. He said the Kuster account is now current.

...

Kuster issued a statement from her Washington office on Tuesday saying the Jackson payment was "en route" and the Hopkinton bill had been paid.
 
Jackson assistant tax collector Karen Burton said she had not yet received the payment as of Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire Democrat Party chair Ray Buckley was playing the Republican Hypocrisy card because incoming NHGOP chair Jennifer Horn has a tax lien on her own property.  But Horn seems to have handled that well enough. (Same link to the Union Leader as above)

"I have been honest about the struggles that my family faced after my husband lost his job, and we stepped up on our own to pay our obligations," Horn said.

"Congresswoman Kuster is a millionaire lobbyist-turned-politician who had the means to pay her taxes, but chose not to do so until she was caught red-handed by the media. Her continued refusal to explain to her constituents why she deliberately chose not to pay her taxes raises very serious questions that must be answered," said Horn.

I can explain it.  She's obviously plowing the earth for a juicy cabinet position in the Obama Administration.  Maybe McKluster could be the czar of swearing at people and taking their stuff?

And while I know there are far too many Democrat tax cheats for even Obama to give them all jobs isn't that where all the tax cheats seem to want to be? Like a moth to the flame.  And let's not forget about this...

 Not very patriotic of them, now is it?

You are reading  "Annie McKluster Doesn’t Pay Her Taxes? "   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

The ‘Weinergate’ Effect (On Congressional Tweets)

According to Mashable, congressional Tweets are down 30% since the Weinergate debacle unfolded.   The lesson in the aftermath seems to be that less Twitter is better if your day job lands you in the Capitol building.  Either that or 30% of the Tweets coming from the Federal Government’s elected members may be considered of a questionable nature and that activity has been castrated by little Anthony and his tweets.

Democrats decreased their activity only slightly more than that of Republicans, 29% vs the GOP decline of 27%, which didn’t surprise me.  What did surprise me was the actual volume of Tweets from the right.  Republicans are tweeting more than twice as often, before and after the momentous events since memorial day weekend.

This might pose a curious problem for the left.  They used to make fun of Republicans failure to embrace technology and social media.   They even bragged about a technical advantage.  But that gap no longer exists.  With Republicans obviously embracing social media–one of the success stories behind the TEA party and the 2010 landslide–Democrats may have to try to win on issues.

Yeah, that is kind of funny.  Win on issues.  I crack myself up.

Fear not Twitter-sphere. The reality of this decrease can be more easily explained like this.  Most sane people slow down when they pass a car on the side of the road that has been pulled over by a police officer.  (This does not apply in Massachusetts)  It is an acknowledgement that there is a line that can be crossed and that we know people cross it.  We just want to show you that we do know how to drive the speed limit.  (In New Hampshire there is a law requiring it.-slowing down when police or safety vehicles have their lights flashing, I mean.)

But about one-quarter mile after we’ve passed the scene we’ll put the lead back in our foot and get back to business as usual.

Give it a few days.  Congress will be back to its regular allotment of Twits, I mean tweets,  in no time.

cross posted

Interview With Congressman Steve King of Iowa

One of the Grok Bloggers, Mike Rodgers, was in Iowa for Congressman Steve King's Conservative Principles Conference, (some video of the conference speech is already up), and the congressman was kind enough to sit down with Mike for a brief interview.

Two Congressman And A Free Throw

The US House just finished it's work on HR1, cleaning up after democrats who in 2010 abrogated yet another  obligation when they found themselves incapable of writing the budget they really wanted right before an election.

The liberal-progressives wanted more spending but that was not politically advantageous.  And since the single driving-force behind all Democrat decisions is politics the budget got relegated to the back of the bus, where the electorate's short attention spans were meant to forget that democrats were never fiscally conscious representatives--they just tried to play them on the campaign trail. 

But avoiding the high profile budget battle was more evidence that they had something to hide. The Democrat House majority was appropriately sedated and placed under observation, while the Senate saw minor adjustments but no change in leadership.  So the process of changing our spending ways would still have to go through a Democrat controlled Senate and across the desk of a President who thinks the words "spending cuts" are just a rhetorical flourish used to provide cover for more spending.

Obama's budget is proof enough of that.

But Obama only proposes a budget.  The House is in charge of spending.  So the new Republican congress went to the back seat of the Hopey-changey bus and picked up the budget obligations abandoned by the 111th congress.  This wwas a free shot at changing the fiscal direction of the country before writing their own first official budget, which was not due until later in 2011.  It was a gimme, a free throw, but one that had to survive the democrat Senate and the Spender in Chief.

So how did it turn out?

The House Republicans took their free throw and settled on $61,000,000,000.00 (billion) dollars in cuts which included votes on 21 amendments to reduce or eliminate some non-security spending. Not bad for a budget that should have been written by a democrat majority House, and a respectable down-payment on the 100 billion promised for their first official budget--though plenty of folks will still be unhappy about it.

To add to that unhappiness,(or not) we have the results of the 21 proposed amendments to cut non-security funding.  Heritage.org (thank you very much) filtered those votes and created both a table you can filter and a pdf.   The table show us how each member voted on the 21 cuts as a percentage of the total number of votes and the pdf lists how they voted on each of the individual amendments.

Looking at New Hampshire we can see that congressman Charlie Bass supported 33% of the proposed budget cutting amendments while congressman Guinta supported 76% of them.  That's a rather wide margin, a tale of two congressman perhaps, worthy of your individual attention should it interest you.

Also worth noting; according to Heritage 95 House Democrats voted against every single non-security cut, while another 45 opposed all of the cuts but one.  That certainly puts a fresh coat of "something" on the face of the Democrat party when it comes to their "belt tightening rhetoric."  (That something is brown, by the way, and it smells "offal.")

So feel free to follow the links, print the report and sift the data at your leisure.  I have provided below the list of 21 amendments referenced courtesy of Heritage.

The spending cuts include the following 21 amendments:

1)    Eliminate $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (Flake);
2)    Cut $10 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Latta);
3)    Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, saving $324.4 million (Duncan-SC);
4)    Cut $50 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Biggert);
5)    Cut $70 million in energy efficiency programs at the Energy Department (Latta);
6)    Eliminate $35 million in funding for land acquisition at various agencies (Lummis);
7)    Cut $64 million from EPA science and technology programs (Flake);
8)    Cut $8 million from EPA environmental programs and management (Pompeo);
9)    Cut $10 million from EPA state and tribal assistance grants (Reed);
10) Cut $7.4 million for forestry programs at the U.S. Forest Service (Pompeo);
11) Cut $20.6 million from the National Endowment for the Arts (Walberg);
12) Eliminate $4.5 million in funding for the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program (Canseco);
13) Eliminate $15 million in funding for the Presidio Trust Fund (Reed);
14) Cut $100 million from Community Development Block Grants (Flake);
15) Eliminate $233.4 million in funding for the National Labor Relations Board (Price-GA);
16) Eliminate $42.7 million in funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (Weiner);
17) Eliminate $10.7 million in funding for the East-West Center (Canseco);
18) Cut $211.2 million in funding from multilateral assistance through international financial institutions (Heller);
19) Cut $446.9 million in Amtrak funding (Sessions);
20) Cut all funding by 5.5% and legislative branch spending by 11%, with certain exemptions, saving $22
billion (Blackburn);
21) Cut all funding down to fiscal year 2006 levels, with certain exemptions, saving $34 billion (Mulvaney).

H/T Heritage.org, Hot Air

Cross Posted