DebateGate

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/10/18/police-worry-as-wall-street-protestors-pine-for-world-series-spotlight/

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – The Occupy Wall Street movement may make a move this week on the World Series.

Facebook chatter from the protesters suggests they are casting their eyes on Busch Stadium, coveting the national media spotlight surrounding the series.

Among the ideas floated among group members online: A massive rally, pitching tents around Busch Stadium or sending a streaker onto the field during the game “to send  a message.”

St. Louis Police Major Lawrence O’Toole says police will uphold the protesters’ Constitutional rights of assembly and free speech, but he’s concerned about a “lone wolf” causing trouble.

“There are times that we know that there are certain elements that can get drawn into large protests and other people who have other agendas,” O’Toole said. “

So far, the Occupy St. Louis protesters have kept a peaceful vigil in Kiener Plaza, several blocks from Busch Stadium.   A core group of about 20 to 30 have been spending the night in tents.  Last week they were joined by hundreds of labor protesters to march through the streets of downtown.

There were no arrests at the march, and so far only ten protestors have been arrested for “violating the park curfew.”

Police know of no threat against the World Series, but are working with the Secret Service to provide heightened security.

The St. Louis Cardinals report they are still awaiting word from the Secret Service and Major League Baseball about what security restrictions fans may encounter with First Lady Michelle Obama attending Wednesday night’s game.

Cards spokesman Ron Watermon says he expects it to be “much less invasive than a Presidential visit.”

But Watermon says there will be some additional security measures.  How they will affect fans is unclear. The ballpark will be open three hours ahead of the game on Wednesday to give everyone enough time to get inside.

If Wall Street is a big problem then why didn't Obama, Pelosi and Reid do something about it when they had full control of all 3 institutions?

The Exasperation of the Democratic Billionaire
Real-estate and newspaper mogul Mortimer Zuckerman voted for Obama but began seeing trouble as soon as the stimulus went into the pockets of municipal unions.
By JAMES FREEMAN

New York

'It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States. Barack Obama doesn't seem to care for individuals, elaborates Mr. Zuckerman, though the president enjoys addressing millions of them on television.

The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Mr. Zuckerman wrote in these pages two months ago that the entire business community was "pleading for some kind of adult supervision" in Washington and "desperate for strong leadership." Writing soon after the historic downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt by Standard & Poor's, he wrote, "I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country."

His words struck a chord. When I visit Mr. Zuckerman this week in his midtown Manhattan office, he reports that three people approached him at dinner the previous evening to discuss his August op-ed. Among business executives who supported Barack Obama in 2008, he says, "there is enormously widespread anxiety over the political leadership of the country." Mr. Zuckerman reports that among Democrats, "The sense is that the policies of this government have failed. . . . What they say about [Mr. Obama] when he's not in the room, so to speak, is astonishing."

We are sitting on the 18th floor of a skyscraper the day after protesters have marched on the homes of other Manhattan billionaires. It may seem odd that most of the targeted rich people had nothing to do with creating the financial crisis. But as Mr. Zuckerman ponders the Occupy Wall Street movement, he concludes that "the door to it was opened by the Obama administration, going after the 'millionaires and billionaires' as if everybody is a millionaire and a billionaire and they didn't earn it. . . . To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country."

This doesn't mean that Mr. Zuckerman opposes the protesters or questions their motives. When pressed, he concedes that the crowd in Lower Manhattan may include some full-time radicals, but he argues that the protesters are people with a legitimate grievance, as the country suffers high unemployment and stagnant middle-class incomes.

It is a subject he has obviously studied at length, and he explains how the real unemployment rate is actually well above the official level of 9.1%, which only measures people who have applied for a job within the previous four weeks. In fact, he says, unemployment has even surged beyond the Department of Labor's "U-6" number of 16.5% that has received increasing attention lately because it includes people who have given up looking for work within the past year, plus people who have been cut back from full-time employees to part-timers.

Mr. Zuckerman says that when you also consider the labor-force participation rate and the so-called "birth-death series" that measures business starts and failures, the real U.S. unemployment rate is now 20%. His voice rising with equal parts anger and sadness, he exclaims, "That's not America!"

It certainly isn't the America that Mr. Zuckerman discovered when he moved south from Canada to study at Wharton and Harvard Law School, graduating from both in the early 1960s. He reports feeling immediately at home and says he never considered returning "because of the sheer openness and energy of life in America."

The U.S. "has fundamentally great qualities," he says. "It's a society that welcomes talent, nourishes talent, admires talent . . . and rewards talent." But he sees "potentially catastrophic" political and fiscal problems. Mr. Zuckerman reports that when he was a young man, 50% of the top quartile of graduates from Canadian universities moved to the U.S. Now, he says, "I don't want my daughter telling me, 'Dad, I want to move back to Canada because that's the land of opportunity.'"

Mr. Zuckerman's bearish outlook since 2006 has been good for his business. That's when he decided that there was a bubble in commercial real estate and his publicly traded real estate investment trust needed to sell some of its office buildings.

'We've had a strategy in our business of trying to have 'A' assets in 'A' locations. I think we had 126 buildings at that point and we came to the conclusion that 16 of them were either A assets in B locations or B assets in A locations, like 280 Park [Avenue in New York]—it was a great address but not a good building. So we sold. We got through 15 of the 16 and we raised in the range of four and a half billion dollars," he says.

Once the downturn began, that cash pile helped him buy some famous properties at depressed prices, such as the General Motors building in New York and the John Hancock Tower in Boston. But he says his firm is still prepared for possible rough economic times ahead. "We're keeping it very liquid," he says, "because I don't know where this is going."

Mr. Zuckerman maintains that America will solve its problems over the long haul—"I am not somebody who's pessimistic about this country. I have had a life that's been better than my fantasies," he says—but he's certainly pessimistic about the current administration. That began shortly after inauguration day in 2009.

At that time he supported Mr. Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure. "But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Mr. Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party." He adds that "the Republicans understood this" and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

Then there was health-care reform: "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at that bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"

Mr. Zuckerman recalls reports of Mr. Obama consulting various historians on the qualities of a transformational president. "But remember, transformations can go up and they can go down."

Now comes the latest fight over Mr. Obama's jobs plan, which has as its centerpiece a tax increase on the wealthy with obvious populist appeal. Mr. Zuckerman supports raising taxes on the rich but says such a proposal cannot be taken seriously unless it's paired with other measures to grow the economy and restrain deficit spending. He also wonders why, if the president wanted to get a plan enacted, he didn't begin with private bipartisan discussions with House and Senate leaders, instead of another address to a joint session of Congress.

"Even if you want to do this to revive your support in the base, to revive your credibility on the issues of the economy and jobs, which has fallen off the table, this isn't going to accomplish it. Another speech from this guy? The country knows this is just another speech. They understand it almost instantaneously, and his numbers have continued to go down for that reason. What the country wanted was some way of coming up with a solution."

The only solution Mr. Zuckerman sees now to juice the economy "is to broaden the tax base and simplify and lower tax [rates]. To me that will be as close to revenue-neutral as you're going to have so it isn't going to be seen as a budget buster." He views GOP candidate Herman Cain's "9-9-9 plan" as a "little bit simple-minded," but he says that a reform that closes loopholes and reduces compliance costs will stimulate both business and consumer spending.

Mr. Zuckerman sees a need for a cooperative effort like that of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill when they reformed Social Security in 1983. That wasn't a permanent solution, of course, as Social Security needs more significant changes now, but Mr. Zuckerman sees it as a model of bipartisan progress.

Unprompted, he spends much of our discussion reminiscing about the Reagan presidency. Mr. Zuckerman has for years owned U.S. News and World Report, and in 1986 its Moscow correspondent Nicholas Daniloff was seized without warning by the KGB.

Mr. Zuckerman immediately flew to Russia but returned home when Soviet officials refused to release their new prisoner. "I worked in the White House for the next four weeks virtually every day and through that I met Reagan," says Mr. Zuckerman. Reagan secured Mr. Daniloff's release in a swap that included a Soviet spy held in the U.S.

"Reagan surprised me," says Mr. Zuckerman. "He got the point of every argument. . . . He was very decisive. And everybody loved working for him. They followed his lead because they really respected his decisiveness and his instincts."

'I was not a Republican and I was not an admirer of his before I knew him," continues Mr. Zuckerman. "And you know, Harry Truman had a wonderful definition for the presidency. He said the president has to be someone who can persuade the American people to do what they don't want to do and to like it. And that's what you have to do. Somebody like Reagan had that authority. He was liked so much and he had a kind of moral authority. That's what this president has lost."

"Democracy does not work without the right leadership," he says later, "and you can't play politics." The smile inspired by Reagan memories is gone now and Mr. Zuckerman is pounding his circular conference table. "The country has got to come to the conclusion at some point that what you're doing is not just because of an ideology or politics but for the interests of the country."

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/weird/Detroit-Holds-Ex-Cons-Only-Jobs-Fair-131864833.html

The city of Detroit has high unemployment, and no one has a tougher time finding work than an ex-con.

So Detroit recently held a job fair strictly for ex-cons. More than 200 jobs were available, and no one who had not been convicted of a felony was eligible to attend.

"That group (ex-convicts) has difficulties finding jobs," City Council President Charles Pugh said in an interview with Detroit Public Radio. "A lot of times, folks who come out (of jail) and get roadblock after roadblock and door closed, they give up and some of them re-commit crimes because they feel that's their only option."

The "Offenders Only" fair was held at the East Lake Church. Violent offenders, sex offenders and people who had committed crimes against children were not allowed to participate.

According to The Grio, more than 1,200 attended and many wound up with employment.

"It was a huge success because over 200 people got jobs," Pugh said. "There were people from transportation companies, cleaning services, the City of Detroit was there with job opportunities. It was an opportunities to give people who have had difficulties a second chance."

Supporters say helping ex-cons get jobs cuts down on recidivism. In addition to holding fairs, the city offers tax breaks and incentives to employers who hire paroled felons.

Julian Pate, the Director of Education at Focus: HOPE, a Detroit nonprofit which helps train candidates, said helping primarily black men between the ages of 18 and 24 who have been incarcerated benefits society.

"What we're doing is trying to prepare people for the workplace," Pate said. "It might be janitorial services, or individuals who are trying to put themselves on a sustainable footing and be trained along the way."

Source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/Detroit-Holds-Ex-Cons-Only-Jobs-Fair-131864833.html#ixzz1ancDSbHw

"As the faith that gave birth to the West is dying in the West, peoples of European descent from the steppes of Russia to the coast of California have begun to die out, as the Third World treks north to claim the estate. The last decade provided corroborating if not conclusive proof that we are in the Indian Summer of our civilization."

So begins Pat Buchanan in his hardcore work, SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER.

"Will America Survive to 2025?"

Buchanan, set for maximum controversy, launches all rockets at introduction "Disintegrating Nation" -- and does not let up for 400-plus pages.

"America is disintegrating. The centrifugal forces pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What unites us is dissolving. And this is true of Western Civilization....Meanwhile, the state is failing in its most fundamental duties. It is no longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars."

The books reads as if its been written to be left behind in the ruins, only to be found by a future civilization.

SUICIDE ranked #2,668 on AMAZON's hit parade early Friday. It streets on Tuesday.

Now only the DRUDGE REPORT can offer a look inside.



Chapter 1: The Passing of a Superpower

“We have accepted today the existence in perpetuity of a permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by society -- fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer’s expense their entire lives. We have a dependent nation the size of Spain in our independent America. We have a new division in our country, those who pay a double or triple fare, and those who ride forever free.”

Chapter 2. The End of Christian America

If [Christopher] Dawson is correct, the drive to de-Christianize America, to purge Christianity from the public square, public schools and public life, will prove culturally and socially suicidal for the nation.

“The last consequence of a dying Christianity is a dying people. Not one post-Christian nation has a birth rate sufficient to keep it alive....The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe, a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation.”

Chapter 3. The Crisis of Catholicism

“Half a century on, the disaster is manifest. The robust and confident Church of 1958 no longer exists. Catholic colleges and universities remain Catholic in name only. Parochial schools and high schools are closing as rapidly as they opened in the 1950s. The numbers of nuns, priests and seminarians have fallen dramatically. Mass attendance is a third of what it was. From the former Speaker of the House to the Vice President, Catholic politicians openly support abortion on demand.”

“How can Notre Dame credibly teach that all innocent life is sacred, and then honor a president committed to ensuring that a woman’s right to end the life of her innocent child remains sacrosanct?”

Chapter 4. The End of White America

“[W]hite America is an endangered species. By 2020, whites over 65 will out-number those 17 and under. Deaths will exceed births. The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear.”

“Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being over-turned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution -- to “insure domestic tranquility” and ‘make us a more perfect union’? Or have we imperiled our union?” (Page 134)

Chapter 5. Demographic Winter

“Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.” (Page 166)

“Not any Iranian weapon of mass destruction but demography is the existential crisis Israel faces....By mid-century...Palestinians west of the Jordan river will out-number Jews 2-1. Add Palestinians in Jordan, it is 3-1.”

“In a startling development of history, Russia’s population has fallen from 148 million in 1991 to 140 million today and is projected to plunge to 116 million by 2050, a loss of 32 million Russians in six decades.”

Chapter 6. Equality Vs. Freedom

“Those who would change society begin by changing the meaning of words. At Howard University, LBJ changed the meaning of equality from the attainable -- an end to segregation and a legislated equality of rights for African-Americans -- to the impossible: a socialist utopia.”

“Where equality is enthroned, freedom is extinguished. The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society.”

“A time for truth. As most kids do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in the band, or the verbal ability to excel in debate, not every child has the academic ability to do high school work. No two children are created equal, not even identical twins. The family is the incubator of inequality and God its author.”

Chapter 7. The Diversity Cult

“The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality,” Wattenberg trilled.4 Yet, one wonders: What kind of man looks with transcendental joy to a day when the people among whom he was raised have become a minority in a nation where the majority rules?”

“Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”

Chapter 8: The Triumph Of Tribalism

America’s war of revenge against Japan was a race war. Newsreels, movies, magazines, comic books, headlines treated “Japs” as a repulsive race whose extermination would benefit mankind....Only well after the war was over was it re-branded a war to bring the blessings of democracy to...Japan.

We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.

Chapter 9. ‘The White Party’

“Through its support of mass immigration, its paralysis in power to prevent 12-20 million illegal aliens from entering and staying, its failure to address the “anchor-baby” issue, the Republican Party has birthed a new electorate that will send it the way of the Whigs.”

Chapter 10: The Long Retreat

“We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from the Gulf states to defend the Gulf states. We borrow from Japan to defend Japan. Is it not a symptom of senility to be borrowing from the world so we can defend the world?”

“Are vital U.S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where were have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 -- or by what is happening on our border with Mexico?...What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?”

Chapter 11: The Last Chance

“We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited -- the best and greatest country on earth.”

ATLANTA (AP) — If there's a policy star in the Republican presidential primary it may be Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax overhaul plan.

It has helped fuel the Georgia businessman's sudden surge in the GOP race. But behind the catchy slogan is a reality: Experts say it will raise taxes on some Americans.

"The 9-9-9 plan that I have proposed is simple, transparent, efficient, fair and neutral," Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza chief executive, declared at Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, where his newfound higher status in the Republican primary race was on full display

Better-known Republicans seeking the White House relentlessly assailed both Cain and the centerpiece of his unlikely presidential bid, mocking it as simplistic and politically unworkable.

"I thought it was the price of a pizza when I first heard about it," joked former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann dismissed it as a jobs plan, not a tax plan.

"When you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details," she quipped.

Still, 9-9-9 has placed the charismatic Cain in the thick of the primary battle. Now the trick will be staying there. On Wednesday, Cain pledged to ramp up his ground game in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, an effort to capitalize on his momentum.

The plan would scrap the current tax code and replace it with a 9 percent tax on personal income and corporations as well as a new 9 percent national sales tax.

Cain argues the 9-9-9 proposal would expand the tax base so more Americans are contributing to government coffers while at the same time getting government out of the business of picking winners and losers through the tax code.

The final phase of Cain's plan would move to a so-called fair tax, eliminating the income and corporate income taxes in favor of a national sales tax.

"It's bold," Jeanne Seaver, co-founder of the Savannah, Ga., tea party. "I like that you know where you stand with his plan."

But while some are swayed by the plan's simplicity — it can fit on a bumper sticker compared with Mitt Romney's 160-page plan — critics on the left say it would place a greater tax burden on middle- and low-income Americans by stripping away deductions that currently complicate the federal tax code.

Most low-income families currently pay less than 9 percent of their income in federal taxes. Nearly half of all U.S. households — mostly low-and middle-income families — pay no federal income taxes, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said under Cain's plan taxes would rise on the elderly and the poorest Americans who earn less than $20,000 a year.

"The top end earners would see a big tax cut and the bottom end would see a big tax increase," Williams said. "Where in the middle it would break even we don't know because we don't have the details of the plan."

The proposal would eliminate the capital gains as well as payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare. Corporations wouldn't pay a tax on dividends and the 9-9-9 plan would lower the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 9 percent.

Cain argued Tuesday night that low-income workers would pay less because he would eliminate payroll taxes, which total 15.3 percent of wages.

Kevin Hassett, an economist and senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, praised Cain's plan as moving toward a flat tax.

"If someone's going to attack the 9-9-9 plan I would say they should be careful because you are talking about the Republican holy grail," Hassett said,

The plan, Hassett said, hews to the conservative orthodoxy of "taxing consumption rather than success."

But conservative economists are not unanimous in their support.

But some say they're troubled by the creation of a national sales tax that would give politicians in Washington a new stream of money to meddle with.

"It's very good in theory but very troubling in practice," said Daniel Mitchell, an economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "I don't trust politicians with a new source of revenue."

Still, politically, Cain seems to have struck gold.

The 9-9-9 plan is seemingly easy to understand, with a memorable slogan. It reinforces his image as a political outsider willing to brush aside the Washington bureaucracy and start fresh. And its red meat to the anti-tax tea party crowd where Cain has drawn strong support.

"The best politicians are those that are able to discuss complex policy matters in fairly direct terms," said former Republican strategist Dan Schnur, who now runs a political think tank at the University of Southern California.

In the past, the 65-year-old Cain has compared the tax code to the "21st century version of slavery," a particularly powerful analogy from the lone African-American in the Republican contest.

Still, there are also political trouble spots.

Cain has been fixated on the 9-9-9 plan and to be a viable contender for the GOP nomination he must show a mastery of other issues.

The plan would also implement a new national sales tax, which draws little enthusiasm among the GOP's conservative base.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum scored points at Wednesday's debate when he noted that the proposal would raise the cost of many things citizens purchase every day.

"How many people here are for a sales tax in New Hampshire?" Santorum asked the audience.

Receiving almost no response he turned back to Cain, "there you go, Herman. That's how many votes you'll get in New Hampshire."

Maybe a few more than that. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of Republican primary voters released Wednesday found Romney and Cain in a dead heat, while Perry dropped to 16 percent. Cain was the first choice of 27 percent of those surveyed, while Romney held firm at 23 percent. The poll, which was taken Oct. 6-10, had a margin of error of 5.35 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/herman-cains-sudden-surge-powered-9-9-9-193640597.html

http://www.southbendtribune.com/sbt-suspicious-petitions-got-a-stamped-signature-20111011,0,3946909.story

southbendtribune.com
Suspicious petitions got a stamped signature
Former Gov. Kernan, 12 others come forward to say they didn't sign

By ERIN BLASKO

South Bend Tribune Staff Writer

7:28 PM EDT, October 11, 2011
Advertisement

SOUTH BEND - Suspected fake petition pages to place Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the ballot during the 2008 Indiana primary passed through the county voter registration office on days when the Republican head of the office was absent, The Tribune has learned.

The pages in question bear the stamped signature of Republican Linda Silcott, indicating Silcott was not in the office at the time to sign the documents by hand. By comparison, most of the other, non-suspicious pages examined by The Tribune contain Silcott's written signature.

Meanwhile, 13 more St. Joseph County residents whose signatures appear on the petitions, including former South Bend mayor and Indiana governor Joe Kernan, have come forward to say they did not sign the documents, and the Indiana Republican Party has called for a federal investigation into the matter.

"How deep does this problem go?" state GOP Chair Eric Holcomb asked. "Is it isolated to St. Joseph County or was it a broader, coordinated effort across the state? ... Who forged the signatures and why?"

Typically, petition pages in St. Joseph County are signed by hand by both the Republican and Democratic members of the Board of Voter Registration.

In early 2008, however, Silcott missed a number of days of work because of the death of her husband. Consequently, her first deputy, Mary Carrol Ringler, often stamped Silcott's signature on the pages.

Each of the suspected fake petition pages bears Silcott's stamped signature, indicating the documents passed through the office on days when she was off.

Though Ringler was the only person permitted to use the stamp, she kept it in an unlocked desk drawer, Silcott said.

In addition, Ringler only began working in voter registration on Jan. 22, 2008. The suspicious petition pages are dated Jan. 28 and 29 and Feb. 4 and 5, within the first two weeks of her arrival.

Ringler told The Tribune Tuesday she could not recall how often she used the stamp during the 2008 primary. "Honestly, I don’t know," she said. "I know I didn’t do a lot petitions that year because I was brand new." She said she mainly uses it on purchase orders now.

Pam Brunette's written signature also appears on the backs of the suspicious petition pages. She is the Democratic member of the Board of Voter Registration.

Brunette did not respond Tuesday to a call seeking comment about the stamped pages. She said last week that voter registration workers “are not handwriting experts, so our job is basically making sure the papers are complete.”

Parties respond

As part of a joint investigation, The Tribune and Howey Politics Indiana reported Sunday that dozens, if not hundreds, of signatures on petitions to place Obama and Clinton on the Indiana primary ballot in 2008 were faked in St. Joseph County.

Before that story was published, The Tribune spoke with more than 30 people whose names appeared on the petitions. All but one confirmed not signing the documents. In addition, a forensic document analyst identified a number of suspicious pages that appeared to have been filled out by a single person.

Since then, Kernan, now owner of the Silver Hawks, and 12 others have also told The Tribune they did not sign the documents.

"No, not at all," Kernan said when asked if the signature next to his name on the Obama petition looked like his own. "Nor does the printing look like mine."

In addition, Holcomb, the state Republican Party chair, has called on the Department of Justice to investigate the matter.

"The integrity of every election is of the utmost importance," Holcomb said in a news release. "This weekend’s disturbing news that perhaps hundreds of ballot access petition signatures submitted by the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are fraudulent raises real questions about the integrity of our process and whether or not those individuals should have been on the primary ballot in the first place."

In response to the ongoing joint investigation by The Tribune and Howey Politics, county Prosecutor Michael Dvorak has launched his own investigation into the faked signatures.

That said, identifying the person or persons responsible for the fakery is a difficult task. Dozens, if not hundreds, of volunteers carried petitions on behalf of now Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama in the county in 2008, both independently and as part of each candidate’s official campaign.

In addition, receipts that would have identified the people involved in gathering signatures on behalf of the two candidates no longer exist. Voter Registration is required to keep records for only 24 months.

The Office of the Secretary of State did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment on this story. Earlier requests by phone and e-mail also went unanswered.

The Obama campaign, meanwhile, referred the matter to the Indiana Democratic Party, which issued this statement Tuesday:

"The 2008 presidential petitions ... were approved and certified as valid by the Democratic and Republican members of the local ... Office of Voter Registration. But even an isolated instance of misconduct ... should be thoroughly investigated, and we support such an inquiry."

Before Warren starts mouthing off about some people not paying enough taxes he should STFU and pay his $1 Billion in back taxes first.

Warren Buffett, President Obama’s pet billionaire, spends a great deal of time calling for tax increases on wealthy people.  He began a recent New York Times op-ed, entitled “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” as follows:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

That’s right, serfs: anything your benevolent “leaders” in Washington allow you to keep is a “blessing” that has been “showered” upon you.  All money rightfully belongs to the State.  It’s about time you spotted owls got with the program.

Funny thing is, it turns out Buffett was being… shall we say… disingenuous when he claimed his “leaders” never got around to asking for his “shared sacrifice.”  His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has been fighting the IRS tooth and nail to avoid paying its federal tax bill for nearly a decade.

How much of the State’s rightful money has this hypocrite been clutching in a white-knuckled death grip?  Oh, only about a billion dollars or so.  Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government tallies up the bill:

Using only publicly-available documents, a certified public accountant (CPA) detailed Berkshire Hathaway’s tax problems to ALG researcher Richard McCarty.  Now, the American people have a better idea of how much in back taxes the company could owe Uncle Sam.

 According to page 56 of the company report, “At December 31, 2010… net unrecognized tax benefits were $1,005 million”, or about $1 billion. McCarty explained, “Unrecognized tax benefits represent the company’s potential future obligation to the IRS and other taxing authorities.  They have to be recorded in the company’s financial statements.”

He added, “The notation means that Berkshire Hathaway’s own auditors have probably said that $1 billion is more likely than not owed to the government.”

On top of this tax bill, figure the value of the time IRS agents have invested trying to collect it – they don’t work cheap, and we pay their salaries – and the resources Buffett’s people have invested fighting back.  All of which would have been saved if Buffett simply practiced what he preached, and willingly handed over his fortune to the brilliant and compassionate “leaders” he commands the rest of us to support without resistance.

Warren Buffet is no different from the other liars and frauds orbiting Barack Obama.  His hypocrisy just runs billions of dollars deeper.  When it comes to “shared sacrifice,” you do the sacrificing, and they do the sharing.