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Leona Sharpton
The Washington Examiner ^ | 11-20-14 | Editorial

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, “Obama’s go-to man on race.”

That’s 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 don’t pay their fair share!

But here’s the irony. Sharpton doesn’t 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 doesn’t hurt to be president’s go-to guy. The New York Times on Tuesday updated a long-running story about Sharpton’s 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 Sharpton’s 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 Sharpton’s 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 organization’s 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.”

Sharpton’s 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 don’t like the fact that President Obama’s the president.”

The truth, though, is surely that a lot of people don’t like their president pandering to a character as odious as Sharpton. The reverend, for all his demagoguery on wealth and poverty, lives by Leona Helmsley’s creed that “only the little people pay taxes.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alsharpton; nationalaction; race; taxes; taxfraud

1 posted on 11/20/2014 5:25:46 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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To: afraidfortherepublic

What did we expect? The shocker is the Times reporting this story.


2 posted on 11/20/2014 5:33:40 AM PST by armydawg505
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To: armydawg505

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.


3 posted on 11/20/2014 5:38:43 AM PST by tanknetter
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To: tanknetter
The Old Left is scared and scared badly by the New Left driving the Dem Party at increasing speeds towards the cliff.

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.

4 posted on 11/20/2014 5:53:36 AM PST by IncPen (None of this would be happening if John Boehner were alive...)
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To: armydawg505

Aound here, people go to jail for failure to pay employee SS and Medicare taxes. I gues Rev Al is privileged.


5 posted on 11/20/2014 6:04:15 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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To: afraidfortherepublic
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.

6 posted on 11/20/2014 6:17:59 AM PST by OldSmaj (obama is a worthless mohametan. Impeach his ass now!)
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To: afraidfortherepublic

Yeah Al is privileged alright. It’s white privilege that gets him out of these fixes.


7 posted on 11/20/2014 6:36:31 AM PST by rfreedom4u (Do you know who Barry Soetoro is?)
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To: OldSmaj

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.


8 posted on 11/20/2014 11:01:12 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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