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May 2013

INDIANA REP. GOVERNOR MIKE PENCE: KATRINA TRINKO

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347500/governor-pence’s-indiana-tax-win

He persuades reluctant lawmakers to cut taxes — does he have out-of-state ambitions?

As Indiana governor, Mike Pence has been flying under the radar. While other Republican governors, such as Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, have taken advantage of their platform to speak out nationally, Pence has stuck close to his state and focused on the concerns of Hoosiers. Pence — who attracted buzz as a potential 2012 contender when he was still a congressman in 2011 — has instead been working diligently to rack up accomplishments during his first term as governor.

Pence’s top accomplishment this session was cutting Indiana taxes. Initially, he had proposed slashing the income-tax rate, currently at 3.4 percent, by 10 percent. Well aware of the burden put on citizens by the federal tax hike on January 1 and by the looming costs of Obamacare, Pence was determined to do what he could to ease the pain for Hoosiers. “He felt pretty strongly that what he could do as governor was to reduce the price of living and working in our state,” explains Ryan Streeter, a top Pence adviser.
Legislators balked at a cut this large. “While we appreciated the governor’s proposal to cut our income tax, our income tax is rated the best and lowest in the nation among the 41 states that have an income tax,” says Indiana House speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, referring to the Tax Foundation’s ratings. Bosma was concerned less about the income tax than Indiana’s death tax, which was rated number 43 (or the seventh highest) in the country by the Tax Foundation.

Bosma speculates that Pence’s original proposal differed from the legislators’ goals because Pence lacked familiarity with the state legislature and its policy goals. “In Governor Pence’s defense,” Bosma remarks, “he and his team have not had the decades of experience with our state tax system and the well-thought-out reduction-and-cut plan that we had implemented” in recent years.

Ultimately, Indiana lawmakers axed the death tax completely and cut the income tax by 5 percent (rather than the 10 percent Pence wanted), reducing the rate to 3.3 percent in 2015, then to 3.23 percent in 2017. “What we ended up doing was putting together a collective tax package that results in the largest tax cut in our state’s history, about $1.1 billion dollars” over the next four years, Bosma notes.

ANDREW McCARTHY: FOR THE PEOPLE THAT GAVE US MIRANDA, MIRANDA IS NEVER ENOUGH

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/347408/people-who-gave-us-miranda-miranda-never-enough Does anything tug at your heartstrings quite like the plight of Ropel Phillipos, the 19-year-old “adolescent” arrested and charged with lying to agents investigating the bombing of the Boston Marathon by his sometime pal, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? Fox News reports that, besides describing as “refutable” the allegation that he gave investigators conflicting accounts about the effort […]

TIFFANY GABAY: “Have You Seen the Controversial ‘This Is Islamic Apartheid’ Ads?” SEE THE ADS IN RESPONSE BELOW

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ Currently, a series of ads labeling Israel an “apartheid state” (featured below) are running in New York City subway stations. To provide a counterbalance and tell Americans “the truth about sharia law,” The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) is planning to launch its own series of New York metro and D.C. diorama ads featuring […]

Specter of Islamist terror by Nicole Brackman and Asaf Romirowsky

http://www.romirowsky.com/13255/specter-of-islamist-terror In the immediate hours and days after September 11, 2001 it became clear to most Americans that the values of tolerance and democracy – cornerstones of the “American dream ” – for which countless immigrants have journeyed to this land are at risk. In the 12 years since 9/11, and in the wake of […]

WES PRUDEN: THE CHICKENS OF BENGHAZI COMING HOME TO ROOST

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7144 The noise in the hen house this morning is the flutter and cackle of the chickens from Benghazi, scuttling home to roost. The House committee opening hearings Wednesday on what happened there is likely to serve up chicken surprise. The four whistleblowing witnesses scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee […]

Europeans Rebel Against EU in Ever Larger Numbers by Peter Martino

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3700/european-union-unpopularity Even in Southern Europe, at the receiving end of the financial transfers, people realize that the euro and the EU’s authoritarian and vainglorious project of molding the various peoples of Europe into a single state is leading to disaster. Even in the South, people realize that it is better to have a job. “This […]

North Korea Goes South: to Menace the U.S. by Peter Huessy

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3689/north-korea-nuclear-threat The North is making progress in its goal of being able to deliver a nuclear warhead surreptitiously to the U.S., probably in an EMP mode, an existential threat to our survival. Missiles and nuclear warheads are the emerging weapons of choice, the modern battering ram, to remove US security guarantees from the Western Pacific […]

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: THE CRITICAL GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION IN VIRGINIA

Terry McAuliffe’s Offshore Tax Scanda lhttp://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/read/2/1178346/1178378.html

http://watchdog.org/series/terry-mcauliffe-gubernatorial-candidate-and-carmogul/

Lawmaker gives feds one more week for EB-5 answers

Virginia official wants probe of McAuliffe company ‘visa-for-sale’ program

VA: As he runs for governor, McAuliffe wheels and deals electric cars in Mississippi

VA: Media echo Watchdog exclusive on McAuliffe’s electric car maneuvers

No news here: PolitFact brands Terry McAuliffe’s electric-car claim ‘false’

Experts question source of McAuliffe car-company funding

Terry McAuliffe on business ventures: ‘Some work, some don’t’

McAuliffe feels heat over GreenTech resignation

MISSISSIPPI BOUND: Virginia officials predicted McAuliffe’s car-building venture would find itself in a “funding gap.”

DAVID ‘SPENGLER” GOLDMAN:THE SNAKE IN SCOTLAND’S GARDEN

 http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/05/06/snaking-the-scotch-crossposted-from-asia-times-online/Ethnocentrism is the snake in Christianity’s garden, and last week it slithered into the Church of Scotland. It took the form of a screed denying the special claim of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. By no coincidence, the most successful Christian communities embrace the State of Israel, while the least successful ones abhor […]

JED BABBIN: BENGHAZI BULL CHIPS

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/06/benghazi-bullchips The Obama scandal that will never go away. The Benghazi scandal won’t bring down the Obama administration. And it’s too early to decide whether it will sink Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016. There are plenty of other things quietly waiting to do that. But that scandal — persistent, patient, and always just around […]