taxmanblog: 6/15/14

Friday, June 20, 2014

It's only corruption when you say GOP

Remember the good old days when you couldn't get through a news cycle without hearing the name Jack Abramoff.

Thanks to our liberal news heros, they've done a good job of making sure we never have to hear about corrupt campaign donors like this guy..............

A California businessman who has donated over $1 million to Democrats, including President Obama, has been indicted in federal court for a laundry list of infractions.

Two sealed indictments were handed down against Kareem Ahmed, the CEO of Landmark Medical Management, and 15 associates, TPM reports.

Ahmed is accused of running a kickback scheme involving a topical cream his company developed. One indictment alleges that Ahmed would pay doctors who handled workers’ compensation cases to prescribe the cream. The scam ran from 2009 to 2013 and involved the filing of false insurance claims, according to TPM, which obtained the documents.

According to Southern California Public Radio, Ahmed paid doctors a total of $25 million to dispense the “transdermal cream.”

The involuntary manslaughter allegation involves Ahmed and two others — a pharmacist and a doctor. The three “did unlawfully and without malice kill Andrew G. (a minor), a human being, in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner and without due caution and circumspection,” the indictment reads, without providing much other detail.

a course in ignorance.

So the city of Seattle is going through with it's minimum wage increase to $15.00 an hour.

But not so fast Batman.

The city managed to to exempt non franchise businesses from the immediate increase.

Why?

If the purpose of this law was to help working class people be able to support themselves are you not saying that their services for a non franchise business is less valuable than a franchise business?

Of course, the people who enacted this law showed their understanding of business acumen with some of these quotes...........

At a recent hearing, City Councilmember Kshama Sawant said franchise owners can afford to pay workers more. “In order to be a franchisee, you need to be very, very wealthy," she said.

Really? For every wealthy McDonald's owner there's a Subway, Kinko', Penn Station, Shell oil franchisee who used their life savings to purchase their franchise.

In addition, most franchisees are required to pay the franchisor fees in the range of 7% of their sales. On top of that, most franchises have to pay 1-2% of their sales go to pay for an Ad-coop. So when you buy that $5.00 footlong nearly 50 cents are paid out before another vendor gets a dime.

But that's OK, because the mayor shows his abject ignorance as well.

“They are part of a larger, national corporate monopoly that is very, very different than individual business owners,” Murray said.

Monopoly?

In addition to the franchise clause, companies with fewer than 500 employees are exampt for seven years versus three for larger firms.

So how is it that if you are the 499th employee at a company, Seattle has determined that your value is less than the 501st employee of a different company?

Seattle has set the bar in defying the cost/benefit principle that's been around since this first econ 101 class began.

Anyone want to make a wager on what the unemployment rate does between now and full implementation?