Claire McCaskill Hates the Middle Class

Otherwise, why would she be stumping to raise the price of gasoline, oil, and other petroleum products?  I got an e-mail from her office, always good for making smoke come out of my ears.  Some choice excerpts:

If we cannot end subsidies to the five most profitable corporations in the history of our planet, then I don’t know how Congress will make the truly difficult decisions about how to reduce the deficit.

Every year, billions of our tax dollars are given away to companies that made $36 billion in profits during this year's first quarter alone. It’s a practice that must stop. That money could be used to pay down our deficit.

A proposal I announced last week will take away $2 billion in annual taxpayer-provided subsidies from the five biggest oil companies and apply every dime to reducing the deficit. It is the essence of low-hanging fruit. This is the kind of idea that should receive unanimous support in the Senate. It’s common sense.

The big oil companies don’t need the money. Over the last ten years, they've raked in nearly $1 trillion – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 -- in profits. They've broken their own records for the most profitable quarter in economic history several times.

My response:

OK, once you get past the fact that they're not really subsidies...I can forgive that lie for the sake of argument.  I love the idea of doing something to make gasoline prices higher!  Doesn't everybody?  But I don't mind eliminating these tax deductions, as long as we eliminate the HUNDREDS of billions of dollars worth of subsidies for ethanol, wind, and solar, which are nothing but massive boondoggles for programs that would never be able to compete in a free market, simply because they cannot live up to their claims. 

The profits "Big Oil" makes are no different, percentage-wise, than most other companies.  Some companies, such as Apple, have much higher profit margins.  Why aren't you demonizing them?  Why aren't you going after their tax deductions?  What do these oil companies do with their profits?  Do the executives just fill rooms up with cash and roll around in it, like Scrooge McDuck?  No, those profits are used for future exploration and as a safety net for when bad times come--and anyone who lived through the early '80s in the oil industry can tell you, they DO come.  The oil exploration and refining business is expensive. You might have read an article published this week in the Houston Chronicle about Shell's new liquid natural gas drilling and processing platform.  Just building this rig is going to cost them $10 to $12 billion.  That's just one rig.

If two or four billion dollars really concerns you, you could start by eliminating the massively failing organizations created by Jimmy Carter--namely, the Departments of Education and Energy.  But it's not really about saving money, is it?  It's about punishing the companies that provide us with our country's very lifeblood.

I'm sure it'll go straight into the "Deleted Mail" folder.

You Paid For It: Sen. McCaskill’s Air Claire Hypocrisy

I don't know Ed Martin, but if I ever meet him I'll buy him a beer. This is some damn fine reporting and near and dear to my heart. I despise a hypocrite and mccaskill has proven she is that and more. Not only is she a hypocrite, she doesn't give a damn about the people of Missouri. She cares about claire mccaskill and what she can gain from her current position. It sure seems like she has gained a lot.

Read the rest of this article at the link below. The ties between mccaskill's private businesses and her votes as a politician. It sure seems as if there could be some conflict of interest going on, and with her record so far, I have to doubt that it was unintentional...

by Ed Martin - Guns & Patriots

All Americans should thank Senator Claire McCaskill for showing – yet again – how the liberal economic “jobs” plan works for politicians instead of people.

A few years ago after her election to the U.S. Senate, McCaskill and her husband bought an airplane to use as their own charter company. She then paid her own company using tax payer dollars from her Senate office budget to fly back and forth to Missouri for official and political events.

Liberals seem to love this kind of business: funded by tax payer dollars, with no bid contracts, entirely self-dealing, and with complete secrecy.

Is it just me, or does that also remind you of the so-called Stimulus bill McCaskill helped President Obama pass in 2009?

Flash forward to a few weeks ago when McCaskill was confronted about her sketchy business deal. McCaskill did what any good taxpayer-subsidized businessperson might do. She sold the plane and shut the scheme down.

After all, it’s tough to run an airplane charter business without taxpayer payments.

It gets worse for Air Claire. The public realized (even the press) that using taxpayer dollars to pay yourself is wrong. The pressure was unbearable and McCaskill whipped out her personal checkbook and re-paid the federal treasury with an $88,000 check. It’s shameful when you game the system to the point of being politically forced to pay back a taxpayer subsidy.

As I watched the Air Claire story develop – I started http://www.airclaire.com/ to help people stay informed – I knew there were more questions not being asked.

McCaskill had been keeping the plane in Delaware and Illinois, two states that do not impose personal property taxes. Well, Missouri does. So, was McCaskill, a committed liberal millionaire who advocates soaking the rich, actually dodging taxes?

Yes, Air Claire was trying to pay fewer taxes. Caught again and pressured by the public, McCaskill pulled out her checkbook and wrote a check for over $300,000 for back taxes on the plane.

Not only was McCaskill paying her own company taxpayer dollars to fund her travels, she avoided paying taxes to the state she supposedly serves.

This is a trend with liberal power-players. Remember how Tom Daschle and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were exposed for skipping out on taxes? It’d be different if these politicians didn’t preach for higher taxes, but these hypocrites love higher taxes for their constitutes yet hate to pay up themselves.

Go read the rest at the link above...

Democratic Senator Reveals Nearly $300,000 in Unpaid Property Taxes

A little more on the claire mccaskill airplane scandal. The best line from this whole article is the last one,

"But with Missouri politics being a rough and tumble sport, the sale of the plane is not likely to put the issue to rest for the senator any time soon".

Especially not with people like me around. I'm planning to remind you guys about this every couple of weeks until the elections. I can't help but laugh a little when I read this. I think I have read it about ten times now.

Another funny part is how claire is always trying to make like she is just like regular people. Hmm, how many of you own your own plane? How many of you have the cash to write a $300K check? I know I sure don't, and neither does anyone I know. You think claire may be an elitist? Yep? Me too...

by Trish Turner - FoxNews

Any way you slice it, $287, 273 is a lot of money, especially in this economy. For one-term Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., up for re-election in 2012, that's the amount of personal property taxes she failed to pay since 2007 on a plane she and her husband, a millionaire businessman, partially owned.

"I have discovered that the...personal property taxes on the plane have not been paid," McCaskill told a small number of reporters on a conference call Monday. "There should have been a reporting to the county of the existence of this airplane...There are people I could blame for this, but I know better. As (a former) auditor, I know I should have checked for myself. I take full responsibility for the mistake." Audio of the call was sent to Fox by a McCaskill aide and can be found here.

The senator said she had done her own "thorough review" of all 89 flights she had taken following a political controversy that erupted recently over the same plane that was first reported by Politico.

The senator had used the plane for political purposes paying for the travel with taxpayer money from her Senate office, a "mistake," the senator said, for which she reimbursed the government nearly $89,000. "All of the money has been repaid for the public funds," McCaskill said Monday.

The senator said she had paid sales taxes on the plane, both local and state, evidence, she said, that she had made no attempt to duck her financial responsibility. "I want to reiterate, there was no attempt to evade the plane...This is just a mistake that I take full responsibility for."

But Republicans did not buy the explanation from McCaskill, a top GOP target in 2012. "In the past two weeks, we have learned that Claire McCaskill billed taxpayers for political travel and failed to pay nearly $300,000 in personal property taxes on her plane. Over the last four years, cash-strapped school districts and the children in these schools have been deprived of these much-need funds," Missouri Republican Party chairman David Cole blasted in a statement from his office.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly pounced releasing a video after the senator's admission showing McCaskill in 2006 telling voters, "If my walk doesn't match my talk, then shame on me and don't ever vote for me again."

One senior GOP strategist with experience in Missouri politics criticized, "While numerous cities across her state struggle to pay police, firefighters, teachers, some even getting laid off, Claire McCaskill is using that money to fly around willy nilly. That money would pay for six teachers to do their job for a year." (According to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, that is correct - an average teacher salary from 2009-2010 was $45,317.)

McCaskill recently co-sponsored a bill in the Senate that would send pink slips to federal employees who are found to have unpaid taxes, a measure Republicans also highlighted Monday, calling the Democrat a hypocrite. But a McCaskill aide said that was not a fair attack. "Those are people who knowingly have not paid their taxes and have refused to own up to it and to make that right," an aide told Fox. "She didn't knowingly do this. This is a situation where a mistake was made. As soon as she found out...she made it right," the aide told Fox.

Because planes are not licensed the way automobiles are with the state of residence, rather they are licensed with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the state has no record of ownership and, therefore, sends no property tax bill.

As for that bill, the McCaskill aide said, "The senator has already written and sent the check to repay this money. There was no effort to evade taxes here."

Still, the controversy has proved too much for the senator, who, according to her office, has no plans for public events this week while the Senate is on recess. An audibly exasperated McCaskill told reporters, "I have convinced my husband to sell the damned plane. He has hired a broker, and I never intend to step foot on that plane ever again."

But with Missouri politics being a rough and tumble sport, the sale of the plane is not likely to put the issue to rest for the senator any time soon.

Breaking: Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Failed to Pay $287,000 in Property Taxes on Aircraft

This just gets worse for poor claire. She tries to present an image of being far above the financial quagmires of other politicians, a fiscal watchdog if you will. As it turns out she is as big a scumbag as the rest of them. And besides, if she can't keep a handle on her own finances do you really think she has any chance of doing it for our Country? Not quite. She is just another professional politician crook like 99% of the rest of them.

By Mark Hemingway - The Weekly Standard

In a conference call with reporters, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill just disclosed that she failed to pay $287,000 in property taxes related to her co-ownership of a private aircraft. This scandal comes quickly on the heels of recent revelations that McCaskill improperly billed taxpayers for use of the same private aircraft, for which McCaskill reimbursed the Treasury $88,000:

Sen. Claire McCaskill is selling the personal plane that has caused her turbulence in recent weeks after POLITICO revealed she used taxpayer money to cover the cost of political travel.

The first-term Democrat said she was very happy she was able to convince her husband to "sell the damn plane."

In a conference call Monday afternoon, McCaskill revealed that after her own review of the plane's records, she had not paid personal property taxes on the aircraft over the past four years.

"I have discovered that the personal property taxes on the plane have not been paid. There should have been a reporting to the county of the existence of this plane. There are people I could blame for this, but I know better. I take full responsibility," McCaskill said to reporters, after revealing she had conducted her own audit of all 89 flights she had taken.

"This was a mistake, It should have been reported in Missouri. It will be paid in Missouri today," she said.

McCaskill said she would be sending a check for $287,273 to St. Louis County Monday for the back taxes she owed between 2007 and 2010.

claire mccaskill to return $88K to Treasury for charter flights

mccaskill is quite the fiscal watchdog. It's too bad somebody was also watching her. She did cut a check to cover most of the flights she stuck us for, but it's easy enough to do that once you are busted. Of course it only took her 4 years to make it semi-right. It sounds like there may wind up being a bit of an investigation. Poor claire, and with an election coming up soon...

From Politico

Sen. claire mccaskill has been aggressive in promoting oversight and transparency for congressional travel, introducing a reform bill that cracks down on overseas travel for lawmakers.

But when it comes to her own domestic flights, the Missouri Democrat has enjoyed friendly skies: She’s spent nearly $76,000 in public funds since 2007 to fly on a charter plane she co-owns with her husband and other investors, a POLITICO analysis of public records show.

As a senator, mccaskill has flown at least 89 flights chartered by Sunset Cove Associates LLC — a

company incorporated in 2002 by her husband, St. Louis businessman Joe Shepard, according to records kept by the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. All of those flights were paid for from McCaskill’s Senate office budget, raising questions about whether the first-term senator and her husband are using public dollars to partially subsidize their aircraft.

After POLITICO contacted mccaskill’s office Tuesday about this issue, a mccaskill aide said Wednesday that the senator — while stating that the all the flights were legal, in accordance with Senate ethics rules and actually cheaper than other travel options — will send a check worth more than $88,000 to the Treasury Department to cover all costs associated with the flights.

In a statement, mccaskill spokeswoman Maria Speiser insisted the senator had not violated any laws or Senate rules, and that neither she nor her family have personally profited from using the charter plane for official Senate business.

Am I too hard on claire mccaskill?

Sometimes I wonder if I am being too hard on claire mccaskill. Well, to be honest, I wondered that once. But then I remembered that she voted for tarp, the stimulus and obamacare.

Watch this video, and then remember that mccaskill voted for obamacare anyway.

The vast majority of the citizens of Missouri asked, begged and pleaded with her not to vote for obamacare. She did it anyway. She cares more about kissing the ass of obama than about the people of the State she represents...

One more video that shows the extent of mccaskill's support of obamacare...

2012 Polling Starting Already...

I got a call last night from some polling firm. I didn't get a good sense of which side they were calling from. They asked a lot of questions about claire mccaskill and a possible running mate that I had never heard of. They asked about jay nixon and they insinuated that Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder may be his opponent.

I told them that I would vote for anyone running against mccaskill, even Mickey Mouse.

I haven't heard anything about Peter Kinder running, but I would damn sure vote for him over jay nixon. While nixon isn't as bad as, say, quinn in Illinois, but it's only a matter of time before he begins to do what democrats do.

I have said it before, I'll say it again, as election time gets closer, I will do anything I can to ensure that claire mccaskill is sent back to her nursing home business and as far away from politics as possible. I will make phone calls, I will knock on doors, whatever it takes.

Lately she has tried to act like a centrist. Just like every other true poitician, she is far more interested in her political future than taking care of the people she represents. She will do or say whatever it takes to get re-elected.

claire mccaskill event...

I got another invitation to a claire mccaskill event. Once again, it is in the middle of the work day.

It's funny, it's blatantly obvious that mccaskill doesn't like conflict. She attempts to minimize the conflict at a "town hall" type meeting by scheduling it when those most likely to disagree with her are at work.