Posted on 11/20/2014 5:25:46 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The Rev. Al Sharpton is perhaps best known these days for his MSNBC show. This provides viewers with a daily diet of its host misreading his teleprompter and egregiously overusing the phrase, I mean, what is he talking about?
But there is much more to Sharpton than his left-leaning political worldview and unimpressive TV skills. He rose to national prominence in the 1980s when he falsely accused white law enforcement officials of raping a teenage African-American girl. After that, he moved on to incite anti-Semitic violence in Brooklyn and Harlem. This was his preparation for a later bid for the Democratic nomination for president. And now he is, as Politico described him, Obamas go-to man on race.
Thats quite a climb.
And from his high perch he routinely condemns people with private jets and all kinds of corporate loopholes for not paying more taxes. He evinces particular distaste for what he calls the Republican tax giveaway to millionaires. In 2012, Sharpton attacked Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for paying a mere 15 percent effective federal tax rate. Tsk, tsk those millionaires who dont pay their fair share!
But heres the irony. Sharpton doesnt pay a rate nearly as high as Romney. Sharpton has decided that the proper rate for himself is zero. To get away with that rate, it probably doesnt hurt to be presidents go-to guy. The New York Times on Tuesday updated a long-running story about Sharptons arcane finances and those of his organizations, reporting that there are $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens against him personally and against his business interests.
The lurid financial tale goes back at least as far as the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax. After one of Sharptons victims won a defamation judgment against him, the pastor used financial chicanery for two years to avoid paying what he owed. He claimed, for example, to have no worldly possessions, not even the clothes he was wearing. Everything he had was hidden in plain sight, the legal possessions of his friends and corporate entities that paid all of his personal expenses.
The Times also noted that Sharptons nonprofit organization, the National Action Network, was sustained for years by what its own accountants characterized as the knowing, willful omission of required employer contributions to the Social Security and Medicare systems. The Times consulted experts who said his organizations failure to pay would have put it among the biggest nonprofit payroll tax scofflaws in America at the time. This was when Sharpton was condemning the Republican attack on Medicare.
Sharptons Wednesday press conference, in which he denied nearly everything in the Times story, was characteristically evasive. He denied allegations that the Times article never made, and, as usual, slyly played the race card by arguing that a lot of people dont like the fact that President Obamas the president.
The truth, though, is surely that a lot of people dont like their president pandering to a character as odious as Sharpton. The reverend, for all his demagoguery on wealth and poverty, lives by Leona Helmsleys creed that only the little people pay taxes.
What did we expect? The shocker is the Times reporting this story.
The Old Left is scared and scared badly by the New Left driving the Dem Party at increasing speeds towards the cliff.
The Times article isn’t so much an attack on Sharpton as a blocking action to isolate him and keep him from doing something that causes collateral damage to Hillary.
The New Left aren't democrats.
They're dark horses, probably with a Muslim end-game.
The 'real' democrats are very surprised, and very afraid; they were the ones who enabled this.
Aound here, people go to jail for failure to pay employee SS and Medicare taxes. I gues Rev Al is privileged.
Yes, he is, and you're a racist for pointing it out.
Occasionally, I turn to MSNBC to attempt to watch this buffoon make a fool of himself.
I have not yet gotten beyond his big mouth: "and thanks to you for tuning in" and then comes the inevitable: "jerning me now..."
Charlatan, race-baiting, poverty-pimping, racist, illiterate piece of shit.
Yeah Al is privileged alright. It’s white privilege that gets him out of these fixes.
I have a set of “radio” headphones that I wear when mowing the lawn. Unfortunately, reception of various stations is spotty, and you can’t really stop to adjust them when you are flying over the grass as quickly as possible. Plus, they sometimes change stations if you hit a bump.
One morning, during a marathon lawn cutting session, my normal station jumped over to a station featuring Al Sharpton. My, oh my, did I get an earful! I couldn’t believe how ignorant both the host and the callers were.
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