Justin Lamar Sternad invokes Fifth Amendment right in FEC filing

A former congressional candidate at the center of an FBI probe tied to Rep. David Rivera has filed blank federal campaign-finance reports and a letter saying he would remain silent to avoid incriminating himself.
"On counsel’s advice, I invoke my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States not to answer or submit the information requested on FEC Form 3, on the grounds that I may incriminate myself," Justin Lamar Sternad wrote Oct. 19 in a just-posted letter to the Federal Elections Commission.
"Please refer all additional inquires to my attorney, Rick L. Yabor."
Yabor declined comment, citing the pending FEC investigation.
Questions from the FEC were bound to arise after Sternad filed 17 blank pages as his campaign close-out report for October.
Sternad lost the Aug. 14 Democratic primary to Joe Garcia, a rival of Rivera. Sternad savaged Garcia with mailers and robo calls that echoed Rivera attack lines. Sternad, a political newcomer and night-desk hotel worker, didn’t disclose where he got the money for the campaign efforts.
The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald first raised questions in August about how Sternad financed his longshot bid for the Kendall-to-Key West congressional seat held by Rivera. The FBI then opened an investigation. Sternad’s letter to the FEC is the first public document confirming a federal investigation.
Federal law requires that congressional candidates disclose their contributions and expenditures. It generally prohibits candidates from accepting more than $2,500 per election from an individual. It’s also a federal crime to conspire to knowingly file false federal paperwork.
Sternad later admitted that he used a Rivera friend, Ana Alliegro, as a campaign consultant, ADD who fled the same day she was scheduled to give a truthful statement from FBI agents and a federal prosecutor. In recent weeks, Sternad has been flummoxed over how to file his final campaign report without further incriminating himself. He and Yabor consulted with federal prosecutors and an FEC expert and they decided the best course of action was a blank report.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/29/3073381/justin-lamar-sternad-invokes-fifth.html

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Chrysler repeats not moving Jeep work to China from U.S.

Chrysler Group LLC Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne reaffirmed on Tuesday that the company is not moving Jeep vehicle production out of the United States to China after it became an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Chrysler in an October 25 blog post had already rejected a statement made that day to a crowd in Ohio by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, that Chrysler was thinking of moving all Jeep production from Ohio to China.
Marchionne told employees by email on Tuesday, "I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China."
Romney, speaking last week to a crowd in Defiance, Ohio, said that he had read a news article that said Chrysler's Jeep brand is considering moving "all production to China."
Later, the Romney campaign aired an advertisement that did not repeat the move of production from Ohio but said that Chrysler is considering making Jeeps in China, which Chrysler has said.
U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign, in its own ad, said Romney was making a "false claim" and noted that Chrysler had challenged Romney's statement.
Ohio is seen by many political pollsters one of several key "swing" states in next Tuesday's presidential election.
Chrysler has been managed by Fiat SpA (FIA.MI) since it emerged from its 2009 bankruptcy, when the Italian company took 20-percent ownership. Marchionne is chief executive of both Chrysler and Fiat.
Fiat has since increased its ownership to 58.5 percent after achieving several goals, including building a fuel-efficient compact car made in the United States and increasing Chrysler sales outside its North American base.
Romney's ad and his comments in Defiance state that Chrysler has been taken over by an Italian company. Chrysler is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, outside Detroit. Defiance is about an hour's drive to the a main Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/30/us-chrysler-jeep-idUSBRE89T15X20121030

Enough Spent on Welfare Programs in 2011 to Write Every Poor Household a $59,523 Check

The federal government spent enough money on federal means-tested welfare programs to have sent each impoverished household a check for nearly $60,000, according to figures from the Census Bureau and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
According to a report from the CRS produced for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), $1 trillion was spent on federal welfare programs during fiscal year 2011 – with $746 billion in federal funds and $254 in state matching funds.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that there were approximately 16.8 million households living below the federal poverty level of $23,000 per year for a family of four in 2011. ( See:  2011 Households Below Poverty 2011.pdf )
If each of the estimated 16.8 million households with income below the poverty level were to have received an equal share of the total welfare spending for fiscal year 2011, they each would have received $59,523.

Read more: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/report-enough-spent-welfare-programs-2011-write-every-poor-household-59523-check

The IRS Tax Form for Obamacare Individual Mandate

Our projected IRS form assists 140 million Americans in their obligation to disclose personal identifying health information and calculate the IRS tax penalty. 

 

As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for the additional filing requirement required by the Affordable Healthcare Act's individual mandate.

Starting in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form requires disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.  As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

You may download a PDF file of form here or view it below.

Highlights from the Obamacare Individual Mandate Tax Compliance Form:

1.  Determination of “qualifying” health insurance.  Under the Affordable Care Act,  most Americans must purchase health insurance deemed “qualified” by the Department of Health and Human Services  (HHS) starting in 2014.  Failure to comply with this mandate results in a tax penalty which must be paid to the IRS. The tax penalty ranges from $695 to $2085, or more, depending on the size of a family.  The dollar amount grows over time and is tabulated on the form. Taxpayers must demonstrate that they obtained qualifying health insurance for each month of the year in order to avoid payment of this tax penalty. [See lines 12-13]

Read more: http://atr.org/irs-tax-form-obamacare-individual-mandate-a7274#ixzz2AonqI9fi

Obama dispatches election lawyers 'all across the country'

President Obama's reelection campaign, openly concerned that his supporters will be turned away from the polls, is offering legal help to voters who see problems.
The president today said in an interview that the campaign has enlisted an army of lawyers to clear hurdles away for his supporters, telling American Urban Radio Networks, "If people have problems voting, we can solve those problems. We've got lawyers all across the country."
Urging supporters to vote early, as the president himself did in Chicago last week, he told black radio host April Ryan that voters should contact his campaign if they are prevented from voting. "If you try to vote early and you see that problem, we've got time to fix it," said the president.
Democrats have been worried that new election laws requiring voters to show identification are meant to block minorities and the poor at the polls. In Chicago, the president provided his license as identification before voting.
What's more, he said that by voting early, the campaign can shift its attention to those who wait until Election Day and help them get to the polls.
Ryan, a long-time White House correspondent known for her news-making interviews, also pressed the president on the high joblessness among blacks and Hispanics. The president responded by saying he would focus on "communities of color" in his second term because those two groups are the "future workforce" of America.

Read more: http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-dispatches-election-lawyers-all-across-the-country/article/2511996#.UJA_y4U-Ifq

Benghazi issue won't go away or be resolved very soon

The battle to exonerate or condemn President Obama for the deaths of four Americans in Libya last month has been super-charged by the achingly close presidential campaign.

Electoral-season imperatives won’t be able to wrench a definitive answer, though, about how and why Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others died.

Additional details emerge with each subsequent news report on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. They don’t all point to the same conclusions, though, or answer the most important question: What could have been done to better protect the Americans?

It seems like a foregone conclusion that someone in the U.S. government miscalculated or miscommunicated. The president ultimately bears responsibility for the safety of American government employees stationed oversees. As president, Obama eventually will have to explain the tragedy.

But that does not mean that conservatives, like Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn, will get their way when they demand an answer right now, before Tuesday’s election.

Obama said in an interview with a Denver television reporter last week that his biggest concern is finding the killers.

"We want to make sure we get it right,” Obama said, “particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the American people: We're going to bring those folks to justice.”
Republicans have claimed that amounts to stalling, but Obama got important backing last week from a somewhat unexpected corner. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that because of the “fog of war,” assessing the Benghazi attack will not be quick or easy, adding, “It takes a little while to know precisely what has happened."

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-benghazi-obama-romney-campaign-20121030,0,5017531.story

The Virtual Economic Recovery Courtesy of Inflation

Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.
During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items. If the price, for example, of New York strip steak goes up, consumers are assumed to substitute the lower quality round steak. In other words, the new measure of inflation keeps inflation down by reflecting a lowered standard of living.
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com), who closely follows the collecting and reporting of official US economic statistics, reports that consumer inflation, as measured by the 1990 official government methodology has been running at about 5%. If the 1980 official methodology for measuring the CPI is used, John Williams reports that the current rate of US inflation is about 9%.
The 9% figure is more consistent with people’s experience in grocery stores.
Officially the recession that began in 2007 ended in June 2009 after 18 months, making the Bush Recession the longest recession since World War II. However, John Williams says that the recession has not ended. He says that only the GDP reporting, distorted by an erroneous measurement of inflation, shows a recovery. Other, more reliable measures of economic activity, show no recovery.

Read more: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article37258.html