Peter Schweizer's Blog, page 7

FOX News: Pentagon spends $34 million on unused HQ in Afghanistan

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute appears on Huckabee to discuss cronyism in military spending and give a preview of the Government Accountability Institute’s report on employer amnesty in the Senate immigration bill. Watch the full video here.

WASHINGTON TIMES: Corzine Cronyism

Mr. Corzine raised $500,000 for the president’s re-election campaign. He was even considered for a presidential appointment before MF Global collapsed. Peter Schweizer, president of theGovernment Accountability Institute, observed in an op-ed column in this newspaper that MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, where many liberals go to do good and stay to do well. Lanny Breuer, the former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, has just left the Justice Department to return to Covington & Burling, where he expects to earn $4 million annually. Covington’s list of clients is studded with the elites of Wall Street players.

Click here to read the rest of the Washington Times article.

WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: OFA Vulnerable To Foreign Donations

The Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a watchdog group, released a reportin September 2012 that stated the campaign was vulnerable to illegal donations from foreigners. The report criticized the Obama campaign’s lax security features on its donation web page…

Click here for the full Washington Free Beacon article.

FORBES: Oscar Nominated Hollywood Moguls Bag Taxpayer Dollars

Consider a few of this year’s Oscar nominated films. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Institute, Quentin Tarantino’s controversial spaghetti Western, Django Unchained, featuring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio has applied to receive an estimated $8.4 million in film tax credits from the State of Louisiana. Actor-director Ben Affleck and producer George Clooney’s film, Argo, received $6.21 million in tax credits from the California Film Commission. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, and Tommy Lee Jones, hauled in $3.5 million in tax-free film credits. Silver Linings Playbook bagged a cool $5.6 million.

Read the full story at Forbes by clicking here.

FOX News: IRS Audits Of Charities Up 79% Under Obama

Under President Obama, IRS audits for tax-exempt organizations have jumped 79% over what they were under President George W. Bush.

According to Internal Revenue Service data, the IRS audited an average of 6,205 returns of tax-exempt organizations per year from 2001 to 2008. From 2009 to 2011, however, the number of audited returns spiked to an average of 11,111 per year.

Read the full article here.

One-Hour FOX News Special Featuring GAI President To Air Friday, Jan. 25th at 9PM ET

America is drowning in debt, but D.C. is swimming in money! GAI reveals how you’re paying the price for the booming business of government.

Sean Hannity gets real insight from political insiders on Boomtown: Washington, the Imperial City!

Watch a sneak peek here and don’t miss this Hannity special, Friday at 9p/12a ET.

 

FORBES: How To Save Taxpayers $124 Billion & Cut Cronyism

With America hurtling toward the fiscal cliff’s edge, Democrats and Republicans continue jockeying for position on whether to boost taxes on the rich, slash wasteful spending, or both.

Common ground might be found in the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market. President Barack Obama has proposed limiting or ending the tax-exempt interest on municipal bonds for upper income Americans. Republicans would be wise to agree to Mr. Obama’s proposal and expand it to include the tax exemptions for all newly issued municipal bonds, regardless of income. According to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, doing so would yield an estimated $124.4 billion over the next ten years.

Why would Republicans agree to eliminate a tax break? Simple: municipalities have become big spenders swimming in debt.

 

To read the complete Forbes article, click here.

 

FOX News: The Cronies That Got Away In 2012

When businesses and big government politicians go into “business” with one another, taxpayers lose—big time. It’s called cronyism.

A “crony” is an individual or organization that colludes with politicians to gain unfair treatment, taxpyer-funded benefits, or regulations that the rest of us don’t enjoy. Cronyism occurs because politicians rely on wealthy interests to fund their campaigns, and those donors then seek government goodies or favors in return.

It’s a match made in heaven for cronies and hell for taxpayers. Just as bad, such cronyism erodes economic freedom by destroying the real competition that fuels free market capitalism.

In 2012, the cronies had a banner year, poaching billions of taxpayer dollars to pump up their profits and redistribute their losses.

Read the complete article here.

 

USA Today: Campaign-Finance Tweaks Can Fix Big Problems

Many issues divide Americans, but keeping illegal campaign money out of elections isn’t one. So why not begin to fix the problem with some simple solutions? Require disclosure of bundlers, report donations under $200 and improve security for online credit card donations. Doing those things would be a smart step in the right direction.

Read the USA Today article by clicking here.

Why Obama Lacks Political Will To Crackdown On Wall Street

[image error]The presidential election is well under way but as President Barack Obama tries to position himself as the defender of the middle-class who will protect the 99% against corporate malfeasance and too big to fail banks, he may find himself in a precarious position. His record does not necessarily reflect his rhetoric and at the same time Wall Street donors have padded his campaign coffers.Yahoo Finance sits down with Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer to find out why.