Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press
"Grover Norquist, talk to the hand."
Cracks are beginning to show in Grover Norquist's once rock-solid hold over the GOP on taxes. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged his members of his party to consider eliminating tax deductions and be more flexible in the interest of paying down the country's mountain of debt.
"When you eliminate a deduction, it's OK with me to use some of that money to get us out of debt. That's where I disagree with the pledge," Graham said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday. Paging Norquist on the set...
"When you talk about eliminating deductions and tax credits for the few, at the expense of the many, I think over time the Republican Party's position is going to shift. It needs to, quite frankly, because we are $16 trillion in debt," he said.
Graham expects equal flexibility from Democrats on entitlement reform. "I'm willing to move my party, or try to, on the tax issue. I need someone on the Democratic side being willing to move their party on structural changes to entitlements."
Graham's position is a baby step towards independence from Norquist and he's one of a small club of Republicans currently in office, like Senator Tom Coburn and Congressman Frank Wolf, who are standing up to Norquist's organization, Americans for Tax Reform. Retired Republicans like Alan Simpson and Jeb Bush have spoken out, although Bush recently conceded that would probably make him unable to get elected given the current climate of the Republican party.
Lawrence O'Donnell previously pegged Norquist as "the most powerful man in American who does not sleep in the White House" over his pledge holding thousands of GOP leaders — including the likes of Graham and presidential nominee Mitt Romney — at the mercy of Americans for Tax Reform. They agreed to oppose all tax increases unless they are met with a matching dollar-for-dollar tax cut. If this eye-for-an-eye oath sounds like it was crafted in the 7th grade — bingo! — it actually was.
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A small step in the right direction for Republicans.
Promotinng tax reform as Romney and some Congressmen and Senators are is hardly breaking with the "no new taxes pledge". The theory behind the tax reform that would include the ditching of the myriad tax deductions and tax credits and lowering the tax rates subsequently is the sane alternative to the attempts of the Obama Administration and the Dems in Congress to provide for even more hand outs to the wage earner middle class tax payers while soaking the professional, business, corporate and investor class of tax payers with even higher rates than they pay now. You can't impprove the economic outlook by weakening those who are the current underpinnings of our national economy and tax coffers.
Is it possible to get this story as much attention has the Trayvon Martin case even if it doesn't involve race? Just wondering?
LOXAHATCHEE, FLORIDA (PALM BEACH COUNTY)
MAY 16TH 2012
Seth Adams returned home after his weekly Texas Hold 'Em game to find a car parked on his property. The car ended up being an unmarked car of an undercover detective. From this point no one can be clear on what happened because only one of these people is alive. The UNARMED owner of the property was shot four times by the undercover officer. Twice in the chest...one in the abdomen and one in the forearm or Three times in the chest and once in the abdomen...there have been conflicting stories. Within 48 hours the county sheriff appeared on the news making the following statement "if you choose to confront....and then assault an officer you need to be prepared to suffer the consequences"
Please note that after the Sheriffs FULL investigation...he was asked how many shots were fired and his answer was I DON'T KNOW....no I can not comment....but I DON'T KNOW!
Per the Sheriff the deputies accounts are as follow: (keep in mind there are no witnesses to dispute this....so we DO NOT know if it is the truth.)
Mr. Adams rolled down his window, as did the officer, Mr. Adams asked who he was and what he was doing there....the officer identified him self...both men exited their vehicles and a physical altercation began. Mr. Adams lunged at the officer....(14-year-veteran) the officer pushed him to the ground and pulled his weapon...Mr. Adams got up from the ground..walked towards his truck reached through the window and as he turned around the officer shot him 4 times.
There is a story in a New York paper that includes statement from the Sheriffs office...and there are some differences in the two statements.
Following the shooting...this we know....Mr. Adams made two phone calls to his brother (who lived on this property with him), was able to get 300 feet away from the officer. At some point during this time the officer called for back up, and possibly medics.
The family story is this....they received the phone call from Mr. Adams...thought the first one was a joke....Mr. Adams again called and the brother and his wife went outside to find him laying on the ground bleeding...with no aide being rendered. When the brother went to go towards Mr. Adams they were forced to the ground by officers with assault weapons and told not to go near Mr. Adams. Still no aide being rendered. And the responding officer’s cars were blocking the shortest route for the medics to reach Mr. Adams.
Reports state that it took 47 minutes to get Mr. Adams to the hospital.
What we know as a community...the closest medics are literally one minute down the road. The entrance to the property was blocked by the responding officers’ vehicles making it difficult for them to enter the property to render aide to Mr. Adams. The call to trauma hawk was delayed. Although there were PBSO helicopters flying for at least 30 minutes.
The Sheriff later made the statement that it took time to get Mr. Adams to trauma hawk since he had to be transported to the landing site. The sheriff did not mention (and the community knows) that the landing site is DIRECTLY across the road from Mr. Adams property and has been for years and it would be quicker to walk him there than load him up and drive him there.
Although the officers took the surveillance video from the property (the property is also a business) with what is now a questionable warrant... they appeared to be blank. There is no surveillance video from the officers’ vehicle.
It was said by the Sheriffs spokesperson the night of the shooting that the Sheriffs Office did NOT know the officer was on this private property (the parking lot of the business) or what he was doing there. It has since been said that the officer was conducting surveillance of the Western Communities, although per their statements...the business was not being investigated. There is really nothing else around this business.
It is also important to know that not one person that knows Mr. Adams agrees that he ever would have gotten physical (or lunged at) in officer. That he was very mild mannered and polite. There have hundreds of statements regarding the type of character he had. AND NO ONE has stepped up disputing them.
The Attorney Generals office has been contacted...they say the can not assist....the governors office has been contacted...they say they can not assist and directed us back to the Sheriff...well we are not so trusting of him at this point.
The Sheriff came out a week or so later and stated that he would turn the investigation over to FDLE, not that he didn't defend his deputy 100% but to calm the fears of the community and family. He failed to mention that he is the Vice-chairman of the CJSTC and his buddy from West Palm Beach is the Chairman.
Letters have been sent to the FDLE committee and the States Attorney, with no response.
There have since been 3 shootings by PBSO. Two fatal. Now all three of these cases have witnesses & two of these cases include shots being fired at the officers....and Sheriff Bradshaw is using these as examples to compare to the Seth Adams case, even though the events are totally different. Mind you the third (& fatal) shooting has eyewitness accounts that differ from Sheriffs statement and those are being ignored.
Please note: The Sheriff has been at the scene of all three of these recent shootings, but was NOT at the scene of the Seth Adams shooting. And has not, nor as any other investigator, spoken to the family concerning their accounts of that night.
It seems to me that if the shooter in the Seth Adams case was not an officer this whole thing would have gone very different....and maybe the news would be more forceful in their reporting. But the community is having a hard time getting this story out there. We are left wondering if we have to create a mob scene as in the Trayvon case to get attention. There was a piece on the news one night regarding the medical report of Mr. Adams....that did not shine a good light on the officer....but it has since disappeared, as has the whole press conference with the Sheriff. A family member of Mr. Adams was smart enough to video the medical report clip and has posted it on FB...but that is the only place you can find it.
This and the Trayvon Martin case were incidents of local law authority purview, with the State Attorney General's Office the place for interested citizens to take their inquiries. We don't need to sensationalize every local shooting incident.
did i just read this article right. he's breaking ranks with grover. oh be still my beating heart.
What I want to know is what did Grover Norquist have on the Republicans. He is just a man. I never heard of grown men & women being afraid of one man. He can't harm you in anyway. You would rather bow down to a man that is hurting the country instead of working for the people who put you in office. This man didn't help you get your jobs but he is sure helping you lose them.
LOL the Etch-A-Sketch Express with Blue Bloods inside and Greyhounds on the outside!
I think making a pledge to put the will of Grover Norquist ahead of your sworn obbligation to your country and its citizens is tantamount to treason.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/230501-make-members-come-to-work
Someone quick make him watch MSNBC! to complete his awakening!
3 years without a budget, and this President's efforts to submit his budget proposals that called for huge deficit spending on social issues and higher taxes couldn't get a single Democrat vote of support in the Senate of the US in the last two years, and you want to poke the finger of blame at little Grover, the Congressman speaking for the Tea Party revolution?
We need spending reduduction and tax reform, just what Romney and Paul Ryan are proposing, and what does Obama, who can't get his budgets supported by his own Party members have to offer? Obama's inane statements that we need to do that in the future, but just not now! we need to raise taxes so we can spend even more! LOL!
Many of the men who got jobs on WPA would have been criminals if they did not have a job. Al Capone helped some men get jobs on WPA. Everyone sho wants to work should have a job and the government should be the employer of last resort. It seems to me that if everyone who wants to work has job, even a CEO who has lost his job, it would benefit everyone one, including those with high income. Does this make sense?
The years of the WPA and the Great Depression were a far cry from today, Agustus.
The men who worked in the WPA camps worked for food, clothingm and shelter. Some had families, and those families received government support for the men who had gone to the camps. Other men left their families for the road, and some families migrated to the Western States (like California) where they found work primarily as migratoty farm workers.
Examine the safety net we have now, and the fact that even without a WPA like program, we don't see lots of homeless people wandering the railroads and back roads of the country, even if we have a 14.8% unemployment and underemployment rate in our present low growth of the private sector economy. In the Great Depression, at its height, there were officially 29% of the population (which was still largely an agricultural economy) that Government statistics said were unemployed, although some realiabe economic historians have estimated with reason that the real number was more like 40% of the labor market as unemployed. (Like the Obama Labor Department has the unemployment rate at 8.2%, but the real rate is at least 14.8%.).