FILE – In this Oct. 18, 2010 file photo, an Amazon.com package is prepared for shipment by a United Parcel Service (UPS) driver in Palo Alto, Calif. States could force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes under a bill that overwhelmingly passed a test vote in the Senate Monday, April 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — You don’t see this very often: a majority of Senate Republicans voting to make people who buy stuff on the Internet pay state and local sales taxes.
Anti-tax guru Grover Norquist isn’t happy about it and the conservative Heritage Foundation is questioning the senators’ conservative credentials. But the issue of taxing Internet sales is getting strong support from Republicans and Democrats alike.
The Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a bill to empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. Under the bill, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.
On Wednesday, the bill passed a test vote in the Senate, 74 to 23, with 27 Republicans voting in favor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to pass the bill this week, before senators leave for a scheduled vacation.
“This is a matter of equity and fairness,” said South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican. “The same people who are selling the same products should be paying the same taxes.”
Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers an advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.
It is part of GOP orthodoxy to oppose higher taxes, a central issue that divides Democrats and Republicans. That’s why the bill faces an uncertain fate in the House, where some Republicans regard it as a tax increase.
But supporters of the bill insist it is not a tax increase. Instead, they say, the bill merely provides states with a mechanism to enforce current taxes.
“This bill has nothing to do with imposing any kind of new tax or revenue generator,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “What this law does is allow states that already have laws on the books to carry out the implementation of those” laws.
By DONNA CASSATA and RICHARD LARDNER Associated Press
Denver Post
WASHINGTON—An interim report by House Republicans faults the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for security deficiencies at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, prior to last September’s deadly terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Senior State Department officials, including Clinton, approved reductions in security at the facilities in Benghazi, according to the report by GOP members of five House committees. The report cites an April 19, 2012, cable bearing Clinton’s signature acknowledging a March 28, 2012, request from then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz for more security, yet allowing further reductions. “Senior State Department officials knew that the threat environment in Benghazi was high and that the Benghazi compound was vulnerable and unable to withstand an attack, yet the department continued to systematically withdraw security personnel,” the report said. Release of the report comes as dozens of House Republicans separately have pushed for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to create a select committee to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report Tuesday. The report also is highly critical of President Barack Obama and White House staff. In the days following the attack, White House and senior State Department officials altered what the report said were accurate “talking points” drafted by the U.S. intelligence community in order to protect the State Department. And contrary to what the administration claimed, the alterations were not made to protect classified information. “Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior administration officials,” according to the 43-page report. Last December, senior State Department officials acknowledged major weaknesses in security and errors in judgment that had been revealed in a scathing independent report on the deadly assault. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides admitted that serious management and leadership failures left the mission in Benghazi woefully unprepared for the terrorist attack. Clinton, testifying before Congress in the final weeks of her tenure, took responsibility for the department’s missteps and failures leading up to the assault. But she insisted that requests for more security at the diplomatic mission in Benghazi didn’t reach her desk, and reminded lawmakers that they have a responsibility to fund security-related budget requests. The report from the House committees is the latest broadside in what has been a long-running and acrimonious dispute between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans who have challenged the White House’s actions before and after the Benghazi attack. House and Senate Republicans for weeks fought for access to information about the attack and used the nominations of two key Obama administration national security officials—Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and CIA Director John Brennan—as leverage to obtain internal documents about the raid.
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base on Sept. 14, 2012, when the caskets of Sean Smith, Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty returned to the U.S.A. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Patricia Smith–the mother of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi seven months ago today–says that President Barack Obama and other administration officials did not follow-up on promises they made to her personally when she traveled to Washington, D.C. last September to meet the return to the United States of her son’s casket.
Mrs. Smith says she wants to know why her son and the others at the State Department compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 were abandoned by their government.
“Please, Please help me find out who is responsible and fix it so no more of our sons and daughters are abandoned by the country they love,” she said in a letter sent Monday to Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.)
“When I was in Wash. DC at the reception of the caskets, I asked for and received promises from Pres. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, VP Biden and several other dignitaries in attendance,” Mrs. Smith said in her letter. “They all looked me directly in the eyes and promised they would find out and let me know. I got only one call from a clerk about a month later quoting from the time line, which I already had.”
Terrorists murdered State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. (State Dept. photo)
Mrs. Smith told Rep. Wolf–to whom she had also placed an unsolicited telephone call on Monday afternoon–that she was endorsing legislation he has proposed—H. Res. 36—to establish a special House committee specifically for the purpose of investigating the Benghazi attack and how the Obama administration handled it and its aftermath.
Sean Smith, who signed up to serve in the U.S. Air Force when he was only 17 years old, was 34 when he died last Sept. 11. By then, he had served a decade in the State Department, working as information management specialist.
In addition to his mother and father, Smith also left behind his wife, Heather, and two children, Nathan and Samantha.
Wolf’s resolution now has 89 co-sponsors in the House and was endorsed last week by a group of 700 special operations veterans, led by retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, and was commander of Delta Force, and the U.S. Special Forces Command before becoming assistant secretary of defense for intelligence.
FLASHBACK: Obama on Day of Benghazi Attack and Tsarnaev’s Naturalization: ‘Our Country Is Safer’
April 21, 2013
President Barack Obama with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta an Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2012. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – On Sept. 11, 2012, as he was campaigning for reelection, President Barack Obama went to the Pentagon to give a speech commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and tell Americans that he was successfully bringing the post-9/11 wars to a conclusion.
“Our country is safer,” Obama said.
Later that day, terrorists would attack the U.S. State Department mission and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, would be granted U.S. citizenship in Massachusetts.
“Today, the war in Iraq is over,” Obama said in his Sept. 11, 2012 speech at the Pentagon. “In Afghanistan, we’re training Afghan security forces and forging a partnership with the Afghan people. And by the end of 2014, the longest war in our history will be over.”
Obama said at the Pentagon that prior to 9/11/12 most of the victims would not have thought that a small number of terrorists could travel from overseas, enter the United States, and do great harm to us here.
A lawsuit filed against DNI Clapper’s office may finally get the Obama administration to release documents regarding the Benghazi tragedy without strings attached.
Credits:
WH Press Office
The Obama White House has decided to turnover documents related to the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, according to news reports on Friday evening. But a non-government organization is continuing its lawsuit against Obama’s Office of National Intelligence to access the documents for itself.
Despite continuous cover-up allegations, misstatements, verbal gymnastics and other evasions, a top public-interest, watchdog group on Thursday announced that its officials had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against President Barack Obama‘s Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The FOIA lawsuit seeks access to records regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by Islamists on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
During the violent terrorist attack, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were brutalized and murdered by radical Muslims associated with al-Qaeda. The documents requested from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper include emails between top national security officials showing the debate within the administration over how to describe the attack and as well as other documents.
The non-profit, non-partisan Judicial Watch is seeking a questionable “talking points” memo indicating that intelligence officials believed from the outset that Islamic terrorists perpetrated the vicious attack despite public statements issued by Obama administration officials, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that attributed the attack to a response to a YouTube anti-Mohammad video.
Judicial Watch seeks the following records in its FOIA request:
Any and all memoranda, assessments, analyses, and/or talking points regarding the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and/or the killing of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence between Sept. 11, 2012 and Sept. 20, 2012. This request includes, but is not limited to, the “speaking points” memorandum referred to by Senator Dianne Feinstein during a televised interview on Oct. 17, 2012.
By Vicki Needham and Peter Schroeder – 04/22/13 06:58 PM ET
TUESDAY’S BIG STORY:
Online tax bill on the move: The Senate overwhelmingly agreed, 74-20, on Monday to end debate on a bill that would allow states to tax online purchases from Internet retailers located outside their borders, seemingly setting up passage of the bill as early as Tuesday.
Despite the support in the upper chamber, the bill could face resistance in the House. So far, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has said he is going to take a close look at the legislation before giving it an all-clear.
Meanwhile, the White Housegave the legislation a thumbs-up on Monday with Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, saying the bill would put online retailers on the same footing with businesses that have a physical presence in states.
“This administration has carefully considered the legislation, and our team has met with a broad array of people on the issue,” Carney said. “And we have heard overwhelmingly from governors, mayors and the business community on the need for federal legislation to level the playing field for our businesses and address sales tax fairness.”
Under current law, states can only collect sales taxes from retailers with a physical presence. Consumers using the Internet to buy goods are supposed to declare the purchases on their tax forms, although few follow through. Some online businesses have begun to voluntarily add the state taxes.
The Supreme Court ruled more than two decades ago that companies only have to collect from in-state customers, but also said that Congress could weigh in on the issue.Retail groups have long supported the issue and put their weight behind the measure, propelling it to this point.
Supporters say that the proposal could give billions in extra revenue to struggling state and local governments. The bill would also exempt small businesses with less than $1 million in out-of-state sales.
Senate Majority Whip DickDurbin (D-Ill.), who has been pressing for passage of the bill for at least two years, said the bill is needed to help states refill their coffers depleted by a lingering economic downturn.
“What it means is a lot of money for the states and localities,” he said.
Still, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Monday that the online sales tax bill would create a new tax and leads America down a “dark path.”
Supporters’ efforts were revived by a vote last month on the Senate’s budget proposal in which 75 senators voted in support of the plan, giving them the go-ahead to press for a quick resolution of the bipartisan bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week he planned to bring the bill straight to the floor, bypassing the Senate Finance Committee and setting the stage for a vote.
US Turns Away 1000′s of Cancer Patients, but has $123 Million for Terrorists in Syria
April 21, 2013 (LD) – The US has announced that it will provide militants in Syria, now openly admitted to being Al Qaeda terrorists, with $123 million in military aid – while thousands of cancer patients at home are being turned away from clinics because of budget cuts. Compounding the the criminal negligence of telling sick people to seek help elsewhere, is the fact that the military aid the US is providing terrorists in Syria will be used to perpetuate an already 2 year long, sectarian-driven humanitarian disaster.
The US$123 million defense aid package, announced by Kerry at the meeting in the Turkish capital on Sunday, includes body armor, armored vehicles, advanced communication equipment and night vision goggles.
Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.
Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.
When one considers that the conflict in Syria was premeditated by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, as early as 2007, simply to overthrow the Syrian government and weaken neighboring Iran, the mind-numbing criminality of America’s current foreign and domestic policy becomes even more obscene.
Everything you need to know that the media is not telling you…
Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio – and winner of the 2012 Liberty Inspiration Award – breaks down the unspoken facts about the end of freedom, opportunity and trade in the modern United States. There will be no economic recovery, prepare yourself accordingly.
Responding to a letter from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Department of Homeland Security -- an agency that has no business being armed in the first place -- says it's buying billions of rounds of ammunition in order to "significantly lower costs."
It's all about saving money, you see. DHS isn't arming up in anticipation of a shooting war on the streets of America, and it's not buying
I think this is a huge story, and it takes very little to tell it. These are the basics on deposit confiscation and how we got there:
■ You know that the EU-forced solution to the failure of banks in Cyprus is to require the Cypriot government to confiscate (“tax”) deposits. That news is everywhere you look; it’s not in dispute or doubt.
Legislators are quick to point out why the Tar Sabds Crude is necessary. It is unfortunate for those who are not making money on this deal as we have all been shafted by these crooks who call themselves Public Servants. They were quick to get this deal approved ASAP, but no one took into consideration that the Oil Company would use any excuse at their disposal to get out of shouldering their responsibility were a tragic accident to occur.
Lo and behold here we are with this terrible spill and Exxon has found a loophole in an existing law on the books that legislators did not bther to close. Doesn’t it just make you all warm and fuzzy to know that they are taking care of us?……NOT!! I say we look for those who were so vehement about the importance of this deal to go through and put them to work cleaning up this spill. Since Exxon has been given a free pass via their incompetence…… Hmmmmm, Tar and Feathers are looking really , really good about now .
Because ‘Bitumen is not Oil,’ Pipelines Carrying Tar Sands Crude Don’t Pay into US Oil Spill Fund
As Think Progress has just reported, a bizarre technicality allowed Exxon Mobil to avoid paying into the federal oil spill fund responsible for cleanup after the company’s Pegasus pipeline released 12,000 barrels of tar sands oil and water into the town of Mayflower, Arkansas.
According to a thirty-year-old law in the US, diluted bitumen coming from the Alberta tar sands is not classified as oil, meaning pipeline operators planning to transport the corrosive substance across the US – with proposed pipelines like the Keystone XL – are exempt from paying into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
News that Exxon was spared from contributing the 8-cents-per-barrel fee to the clean-up fund added insult to injury this week as cleanup crews discovered oil-soaked ducks covered in “low-quality Wabasca Heavy Crude from Alberta.” Yesterday officials said 10 live ducks were found covered in oil, as well as a number of oiled ducks already deceased.
Photographer Eilish Palmer, known as Lady with a Camera, has been working with HAWK (Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters), a wildlife rehabilitation centre, to locate and help ducks and other animals affected by the spill.
When I connected with Eilish on the phone today, she was outside in the rain searching for more oil-covered wildlife: “I’m actually out in the woods right now looking for animals. We just found two dead ducks and one live one…We actually saw a dead wood duck and we saw its mate, it couldn’t fly away, only walk. It was pretty saturated.”
Eilish said HAWK was the first responder for affected wildlife in the area but has since seen Exxon establish a local mobile unit to treat animals on site. “As the number of animals increased Exxon brought in their own rehabilitation centre because we were taking the animals to a centre about an hour away. HAWK doesn’t have a mobile unit.”
In addition to ducks, the team working with HAWK also found this oil-laden male muskrat, suggesting a number of species may be affected.
The central Arkansas spill caused by Exxon’s aging Pegasus pipeline has reportedly unleashed 10,000 barrels of Canadian heavy crude – but a technicality says it’s not oil, letting the energy giant off the hook from paying into a national cleanup fund.
At least legally speaking, diluted bitumen like the heavy crude that’s overrun Mayflower, Arkansas is not classified as ‘oil.’ While the distinction might normally not mean much, in the case of the disastrous spill in Arkansas it ensures that ExxonMobil will not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
According to ThinkProgress, which has brought attention on the strange legal exemption, ExxonMobil has already confirmed that the compromised pipeline was transporting “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude” from Canada’s Alberta region. That particular form of crude must be diluted with lighter fluids to evenly flow through a pipeline – it also contains large quantities of bitumen (commonly known as asphalt).
The end result is that both the US Congress and the Internal Revenue Service do not consider tar sand oil as oil at all, and thus exempt any company transporting the crude from paying an $0.08-per-barrel tax – which is the primary source of cash for the federal government’s oil spill cleanup fund.
A record number of Americans are using food stamps, known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Despite official proclamations that the recession has ended and an economic recovery is underway, families are turning to SNAP benefits in record numbers. The working poor comprise a growing number of food stamp recipients, and about half of those receiving benefits are children.
An U.S. Army soldier stands guard near a burning oil well in the Rumaylah Oil Fields in Southern Iraq April 2, 2003. | ARLO K. ABRAHAMSON/U.S. Navy News
WASHINGTON — Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country’s oil industry is poised to boom and make the troubled nation the No.2 oil exporter in the world. But the nation that’s moving to take advantage of Iraq’s riches isn’t the United States. It’s China.
America, with its own homegrown energy bonanza, isn’t going after the petroleum that lies beneath Iraq’s sands nearly as aggressively as is China, a country hungry to fuel its rise as an economic power.
Iraq remains highly unstable in terms of security, infrastructure and politics. Chinese state-owned oil companies appear more willing to put up with that than Americans are.
“The Chinese have a higher tolerance for risk,” said Gal Luft, a co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington research center focused on energy.
The International Energy Agency expects China to become the main customer for Iraq’s vast oil reserves. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, recently declared “a new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing.” Birol said that about 80 percent of Iraq’s future oil exports were expected to go to Asia, mainly to China.
Iraq’s potential for oil production is huge. The International Energy Agency predicts that Iraqi production will more than double in the next eight years and that the country will be by far the largest contributor to growth in the global oil supply over the next two decades. By the 2030s, the agency expects Iraq to become the second largest global oil exporter, overtaking Russia.
Ten years after the invasion of Baghdad, major American oil companies are staying away from investing in Iraq’s oil resources, McClatchy’s Sean Cockerham reports.
Instead, many of Iraq’s newest oil fields are now controlled by Chinese.
Iraq possesses the second-largest oil deposit in the world, in the West Qurna region. Forbes says the country could easily become the second-largest oil producer in the world after Saudi Arabia.
Only Exxon and Occidental have active stakes in Iraqi oil fields. The reason for America’s relative absence, Cockerham writes, is that the country is still too unstable.
An U.S. Army soldier stands guard near a burning oil well in the Rumaylah Oil Fields in Southern Iraq April 2, 2003. | ARLO K. ABRAHAMSON/U.S. Navy News
