Dartmouth Alums Asked to Vote in Alumni Elections

Dartmouth alums have only one week left in which to vote in the current round of alumni elections. Voting closes on Wednesday, April 7.

This year, we are electing two Trustees, but only one slot is contested. In that race, our friend Joe Asch is running against John Replogle. For the reasons set forth here, I voted for Joe.

The other race is for the Executive Committee of the Association of Alumni. My friend Mike Murphy leads the Dartmouth United slate. Incumbent John Mathias heads the other group.

If there were a law against false advertising in alumni elections, Mathias would be working on a second life sentence. For example, Mathias campaigns on a platform of promoting civil discourse and unity among alums. Yet, he referred to Joe Asch as “almost pathological” in his criticism of Dartmouth’s former administration.

In 2008, Mathias and his slate promised to make a sincere effort to restore parity on the Board of Trustees between appointed and elected members. Mathias stated: “What the Trustees have done yesterday, they can undo tomorrow, if a suitably persuasive case can be made for them.”

But according to meeting minutes from the eleven sessions convened by Association Executive Committee during its first term in 2008-2009, the Executive Committee took no action on the issue of parity. In fact, according to the minutes, the issue wasn’t even discussed.

Thus far in the Committee’s 2009-2010 second term, it has held at least five meetings. The most recent minutes indicate that, conscious that its reelection attempt was around the corner, Mathias and company finally decided to take up the issue of parity with the Board of Trustees. One week before his slate announced that it had nominated itself to run for a third term, Mathias held a meeting with Board Chairman Ed Haldeman on December 15, 2009.

There is no indication that anything has come of the meeting. What’s clear is that Mathias and his colleagues are either unwilling or unable convincingly to make the case for parity to the Board. In either event, it is time to change the leadership of the AoA.

Dartmouth Alumni can vote in the election by returning the ballot they should have received or by voting online here

Comment:   I am not a Darnouth grad, but I am somewhat aware of the recent alumni struggles  with the establishment bureaucrats running this institution at present who have launched a campaign to establish lefty domination over  Dartmouth’s  Board of Trustees.

What else is new in modern day “institutions of higher learning?”

Marxists have their own version of  religious jihad  to offer, apparently even at Dartmouth.

Powerline is a fine website.  I wish them luck.

Charlie Schumer is Hateful, Creepy and Vile.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Charlie Schumer, Henry Waxman, Pat Leahy, Representative Nadler, the list could go on and on of those contemporary Democrats who have  no regard for truth whatever, and less regard for the consequences of asserting their untruths…….at any level in the public arena.

President Obama is also allergic to truthfulness, so also  remindful of all those mentioned above, but he is president so belongs in a catagory unto himself.

This morning Dennis Prager played a  recording of New York Senator Charlie Schumer’s characterization of the American medical profession……The are people, mostly men, who talk sweetness of treatment and price, but when the patient receives the bill, it is a shocking $4.000.00 “for nothing”….is the creepy Senator’s quote. 

I don’t apologize for using the above adjective to describe the New York senior Senator.   His tongue is so reliably  foul, full of   attacks in general and on the business classes of America in particular, usually insinuating  corruption combined with attacks  on personal character of innocent people like the example of his portrayal here of doctor.  

I am over 75 years old.   I have never met such a doctor as Foul Schumer describes in my life.  

How does a creep like Charlie Schumer get elected to the Senate?   Whom does he represent?   Exactly who is his look-alike among Republicans?…….I can remember only one……Joseph R. McCarthy Senator from  Wisconsin, but he at least offered some public service with a few of his exposes such as those in Hollywood paid by the Soviet Secret Service to cook up stories for the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics….Comrade Stalins home grounds.

Senator McCarthy has been dead now for a long time.

Have these Democrats no honor at all?  Hillary attacks Exxon periodically for price gouging………Lies….and no one seems to care.   President Obama characterizes the Health industry as crooks, pocketing sick peoples hard earned money for nothing.    This president actually claime that there was $500,000,000,000, in WASTE in his Medicare program….remember the government program of his responsibility since January 20, 2009?  

Not once did this august individual ever suggest maybe someone in his administration should think about curtailing the fleecing of all of these billions of dollar.  Never came through the president’s overtactive mouth to do so, however.

It is the trade of the Marxist and has been for decades and decades to bull whip private enterprise and the entire class of folks competing and living in that sector.

If a person of any race talked or  wrote about the Leftwing Sacred Class, the blacks, lesbians, and gays, latinos, Indians, and their feminist groups without evidence….even without a shred of truth,  as the president and his  leaders of the Democratic Party habitually and widely smear and sneer those of us working in the private sector, and  were held with the same touchy touchy  vigils of the ACLU, they’d all be in jail for life and there forever without a penny.   But then, so might the attorneys for the ACLU.   And what a better world of truth there would be.

Charlies Schumer is a hateful, creepy vile Senator unworthy of leadership in the American public scene.   He has a right to be sleazy within the confines of his own home.   I am a democrat and certainly will gladly grant him that.

Obama-Pelosi-Reid Thugishness Adds to the Poison of Obamacare

Results versus process.   Do the ends justify the means?   Was Stalin justified in murdering 30,000,000 of Russian citizens as a chapter in his Marxist plan for the country to  ”move forward?”   What happens when the “move forward” is perpetually murderous?

Read what Noemie Emery writes in the Washington Examiner:

“What happened to the victory lap Obama was supposed to be taking? What happened to the spike in the polls for both him and for health care, for his acclamation as being a man who could govern, and his party, as being able to lead?

What happened to being allowed to “move on,” once health care was done with? What happened to his coronation — as some bloggers had it — to being our cooler and new FDR?

Well, there was a small spike in the ratings, but it came from his base, which now “strongly approves” as opposed to being indifferent, but the independents who turned against him last summer are angry and not turning back.

He and health care are still underwater, and the ratings for health care itself are abysmal. He is bleeding among the middle class that elected him, and that the health care bill had been drawn to win over.

Outside his base, he polls less like FDR than like FDR Jr. He is tied for re-election with an unnamed Republican, and 54 percent of poll respondents think he won’t make it.

Far from being cowed, his opponents are pumped, and the public supports them. A CBS poll says 62 percent of respondents want Republicans to go on fighting the measure. A Rasmussen poll says 55 percent want the act repealed altogether. It wasn’t supposed to work out in this manner. But work out in this manner it has.

To see why, let’s amble down memory lane, to the autumn of 1973. Under siege and suspicion for illegal activities, Richard M. Nixon was asked to turn over his infamous tapes to the Ervin Committee and Archibald Cox.

Nixon offered a written synopsis, which he would, of course, edit. Cox refused. Nixon decided the only way out of his quandary was firing Cox. He did (after two attorneys general resigned in defiance) and quite justly cooked his career.

It wasn’t illegal, but it was illegitimate, in that it violated the sense of the law, the spirit of justice and the sense of propriety that holds cultures together. Nixon was toast, and Robert Bork, who fired Cox in the spirit of duty, was tainted forever. People unmoved by Ted Kennedy’s rantings could not overcome their aversion to that.

The passage of health care is not the same thing as obstruction of justice, but it has a connection, in nature and kind. Before Scott Brown appeared, the bill, while unpopular, was headed on a legitimate path to enactment, by passing the House and the Senate, and going into a conference committee, after which the revised version would be sent for final affirmation to the Senate and House.

After Brown, this couldn’t occur as the Senate would kill it, so it had to sneak by — against the popular will and by bribes, threats and buy-offs — through a loophole for which bills of this import were not intended. Big bills aren’t supposed to squeak by on a simple majority, and under proper procedure, it would not have happened.

It followed the law, while it shattered its intent. The whole country knows it’s a fraud.

As a result, it’s a “law” that the country feels little respect for and feels morally free to resist. It is a law with an asterisk, a law with a stench, a law few regard as conclusive or binding.

Spit on the law and the public, and the public will seek ways to use law to deny you. This fire will burn a long time.”

Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”

Comment:  I am not sure that this fire of Soviet bullying and bribing  will burn a long time.  Most Americans don’t want to know about politics.   How can we blame them with folks like Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and Arlen Specter around?  

They want to be left alone to live their lives.  Unfortunately, we all become so ignorant of what is happening when we escape into our own private world.  

Democracies aren’t meant for such pussy people.  It’s health is completely in the hands of the people.   When people don’t bother to learn about vital issues,, either because they were never taught knowledge in school or college,  and  taught hate instead,  or they don’t have the time, the Obama’s of the world have a free ride to crash the democratic process……..WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HE HAS DONE WITH OBAMACARE……AND WILL CONTINUE TO TRY TO DO!

We, the people, have caused this mess.   I am not confident that we, the people, will know what to do. 

Usually democracies aren’t valued  much……..until they are overthrown. 

The U.S. is going bankrupt. Now what are they going to make us do?

We can’t pay for obamacare despite what the Marxists have claimed.  What is the president’s real plan to collect the $$$$?

 SALES TAXES AD NAUSEUM?    

Avoiding paying sales taxes on some purchases made online of out of state is getting more difficult, according to the Wall Street Journal:

• Twenty four states, plus the District of Columbia, are adding a special line on tax return forms that requests a payment for sales taxes on any good bought out of state, including those from online retailers.
• This is up from 20 states in 2008.
• Other states collect the tax in a variety of ways, some with special forms that taxpayers are supposed to fill out voluntarily.

States are trying to recoup some of the $20 billion or so they lose each year to online sales tax evasion.  The gap exists for a quirky reason:  States with sales taxes always have a “use tax” on items residents buy from out-of-state vendors.  But a 1992 Supreme Court decision affirmed that out-of-state vendors don’t have to collect the tax.  It’s up to taxpayers to track what they owe, but most don’t, says the Journal.

Many states warn against leaving the line blank, however, and include a table of “suggested” contributions by income level:

• In New York, the suggested contribution for a return showing $200,000 of adjusted gross income is $78.
• Items costing more than $1,000 are supposed to be handled separately.

Honest souls who want to figure out what they owe will find it tough, because of a patchwork of current practices, says the Journal.  Scott Peterson, executive director of the Streamlined Sales Tax initiative, used credit card statements to work out what he owed for 2009: “I made a spreadsheet,” he says, “so figuring it out only took about four hours.”

Source: Laura Saunders, “The Sales Tax That Comes Back to Bite,” Wall Street

Or VAT….the value added tax?

On January 1st the United Kingdom saw the value-added tax (VAT) increase from 15 percent to 17.5 percent — one of the legacies of the disastrous administration of Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, says Liberty magazine.

• For those unfamiliar with the tax (and in this case, ignorance is bliss): VAT is essentially a sales tax, but drawn out over the process of production.
• Instead of the end-user paying the entirety of the tax up front, everybody pays a little chunk of tax along the way — the manufacturer, the wholesaler, and so on — as they add “value” to the product.
• The entire burden of the VAT is still borne by the consumer.

It was heartening to see a number of businesses announce that they would keep their prices the same as they were on December 31, thus absorbing the extra 2.5 percent.  The specific goal of the VAT process is to prevent the formation of black markets.

So what would voters do when elections are called later this year?  Unfortunately, the Prime Minister-in-waiting David Cameron has refused to rule out a further hike in the VAT, up to the European average 20 percent — a move that will strain budgets across the tax-laden United Kingdom, and test the resolve of businesses trying to square the desires of their customers with the demands of the treasury, says Liberty.

Source: Andrew Ferguson, “Declare the pennies on your eyes” Liberty, April 2010

For text: Liberty Magazine, April 2010.

The above articles were made available by the National Center for Policy Analysis.