Viewpoint Inn Owners:"Blame Everyone Else First" Poster Boys

 Geoff Thompson and Angelo Simione, the former owners of the View Point Inn who incurred over $3 million in debt,  much of it to local business owners, have now joined the "Occupy Portland" protests. 

Watch this video to see them in action at the protests:

The story of the demise of the View Point Inn has been covered extensively in the media. According to the Gresham Outlook,

"...court documents revealed that Thompson owes upward of $2.9 million to hundreds of creditors — including government agencies, local businesses and people who held or who were planning to hold events at the inn. Of that amount, Thompson owes $2.8 million in secured debt, including a federal tax lien of almost $104,000, at least five state tax liens, at least nine judgment liens and other trust deeds and mortgages. He also owes unsecured debt totaling almost $128,000, as well as money to at least 188 creditors with “unknown” claims."

  Thompson and Simione, who have blamed their business failures on everyone from President Obama to local creditors who had the nerve to insist on being paid for their work, are the ideal poster boys for the essential message of the entire Occupy Wall Street crowd:

"BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FIRST".

How ironic that they're blaming President Obama, because "Blame Everyone Else First" has been Obama's tag line for the past three years as a way to excuse his failures. Blame Bush! Blame the Republicans! Blame the Tea Party! Blame the economy! Blame those who cling to their guns and religion! Blame Congress!
 

I'm sure they'll all be very happy together, blaming everyone else but themselves for their failures.

For All You Protesters out there. . .

A local public defender gives advice to the "Occupy Portland" crowd in the Portland Mercury. Read the entire letter here. (What's Occupy Portland? See local coverage here.)

Read This Before You Protest: An Open Letter to Occupy Portland from a Public Defender

"Dear Occupy Portland:
I don’t disagree with many of your goals and aims. I think that the banks and large corporations and mortgage fraudsters that made a killing off the crash need a few less bailouts and a few more criminal charges to thin out their ranks. But I am nothing if not a realistic and practical person. I want you to temper your idealism and righteous rage with a nice slap of reality. So if, in fact, you gather enough people and present your version of Tahrir on the Willamette, things are going to get bad. And I want to give you a heads up about some things you may not have been thinking about."

Fair Share? Even 100% Corp Tax Isn't Enough!!

President Obama and the Democrats in Congress keep saying that U.S. corporations need to “pay their fair share” in order to resolve our national debt problems. They want more revenue a.k.a more TAXES from those evil corporations. And that leads us to the big question: Is our national debt a spending problem or a revenue problem?


Democrats want U.S. companies to pay their “fair share” to close the deficit gap. Ok! Let’s give it the old Democrat try. Let’s really STICK IT to those evil corporations and their Lear jets, tax breaks, etc. Are you ready? Here we go!



Let’s target the biggest U.S.corporations, the ones with annual gross revenues of over $40 billion per year. There are over 60 of these giant corporations in the U.S. (They’re listed below, along with their 2010 profits listed in billions of dollars. )


Remember now, we’re going to force these evil corporations to pay their “fair share”. Let’s not beat around the Bush. Let’s go all the way. Let’s tax their annual net profits at 100%. That’s the kind of fair share that any Democrat would be happy with. How much would a 100% tax on the net profit of these largest companies raise for one year? A whopping $204.8 BILLION dollars!!!


Wow, you’re thinking! $204.8 billion dollars would not only stick it to those corporations, but it would also would pay for everyone's health care, plus feed the poor children, and pay for all those public employee pensions, right? And it would solve our debt ceiling problems, too! That's the fair share President Obama is talking about, right?


There’s just one little problem. Currently, U.S. Government spending outpaces revenues by $118 BILLION per month. That’s right. The U.S. spends $1.4 TRILLION per year more than it receives in revenue. Even if Congress taxed 100% of the annual net profits of every U.S. company with over $40 billion in annual gross revenue, it would pay for less than TWO MONTHS of our monthly deficit of $118 billion per month. Think about that.
 

Even if our largest corporations were taxed the equivalent of 100% of their annual net profits, it still wouldn’t be enough to solve our nation’s debt problem. Clearly, we have a spending problem. And no additional “fair share” of new corporate taxes proposed by Obama and the Democrats will put even a small dent in our national debt.

TOP US COMPANIES (Exceeding $40 Billion in annual revenues)	Profits (billions)
WalMart	$14.3
ExxonMobil	$19.3
Chevron	$10.4
ConocoPhillips	$4.8
General Electric	$11.0
Berkshire Hathaway	$8.0
General Motors	$0.0
Ford Motor Company	$2.7
Hewlett Packard	$7.7
AT&T	$12.5
McKesson Corporation	$1.3
Bank of America	$6.3
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation	-$71.9
Cargill	$0.0
Verizon	$3.6
JP Morgan Chase	$11.7
Koch Industries	$0.0
IBM	$13.4
Cardinal Health	$1.2
CVS Caremark	$3.7
United Health Group	$3.8
Citigroup	-$1.6
Wells Fargo	$12.3
Valero Energy	-$2.0
Kroger	$7.0
Procter & Gamble	$13.4
AmeriSource Bergen	$0.1
American International Group	$0.1
Costco	$1.1
Marathon Oil	$1.5
Walgreens	$2.0
Home Depot	$2.7
Target Corporation	$2.5
Apple Inc.	$5.7
Boeing	$1.3
Microsoft	$14.6
Phillip Morris International	$6.3
Archer Daniels Midland	$1.7
Johnson & Johnson	$12.3
State Farm Insurance	$0.7
Medco Health Solutions	$1.3
WellPoint	$4.7
PepsiCo	$5.9
United Technologies	$3.8
Dell	$1.4
Pfizer	$8.6
Best Buy	$1.3
United Parcel Service	$2.1
Lowe's	$1.8
Lockheed Martin	$3.0
Goldman Sachs	$13.4
Dow Chemical	$0.1
Sears Holdings	$0.2
Intel	$4.3
Caterpillar	$0.9
Chrysler	$0.0
Bunge Limited	$0.4
MetLife	-$2.2
Safeway	-$1.1
SuperValu	$0.4
Kraft Foods	$3.0
Cisco	$6.1
TOTAL	$204.8
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue
Source:  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/full_list/

Kulongoski/Democrats NOW Say Oregon's About To Suffer Decades of Pain? PLEEEZ.

It's takes my breath away to see the Oregonian's front page headline this morning. It also angers me to my core. "State faces decade of pain", says the headline. "Oregon risks 10 years of crushing, multibillion-dollar budget shortfalls unless it immediately puts the brakes on spending and starts offering fewer services, cautions a new report released Thursday. This is no attack by anti-tax or anti-government factions. The warning comes from Gov. Ted Kulongoski's "reset Cabinet," a group of trusted advisers he appointed to assess the state's long-term fiscal outlook and suggest changes."

Yes, I am angry and flabbergasted at the hypocrisy  of the democrats. THEY CAUSED THIS MESS.  Are you people for real? It didn't take a special governor's committee to figure this out.  Throw these bums out of office in November. Throw them out for good!