My entire childhood (almost) in one email...

45 rpm spindles  Aluminum Ice cube trays  Roller-skate keys  Cork pop guns  Marlin Perkins  Drive-in Movies Drive-in restaurants (not THRU) with Car Hops  Studebakers  Topo Gigio (Ed Sullivan Show)  Washer wringers  The Fuller Brush Man (Red Skelton) Reel-To-Reel tape recorders  Tinkertoys  Erector Sets  Lincoln Logs 25 cent a gallon gasoline and you got green stamps  15 cent hamburgers  5 cent packs of baseball cards  Penny candy  postage rates for 1st class  Jiffy Pop popcorn  Gum wrapper chains  5 cent Cokes  Chatty Cathy dolls  Flash bulbs  Sky King  Speedy Alka-Seltzer Cigarettes for Christmas  Falstaff Beer  Burma Shave signs  Brownie camera  TV Test patterns  Old Yeller  Chef Boy-AR-dee Timmy and Lassie Ding Dong Avon calling Brylcreem (a little dab'll do ya'). Aluminum Christmas Trees w/ revolving lights If you can remember most or all of these,  Then you have lived. Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their 'grown-up' life. And if some or all of these are unknown to you, I'm so sorry.  You missed out on the "good stuff"!  Life was simple and wonderful back then.

  
 

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In This Edition: Message From the President CEA News In Case You Missed It Message From the President It has been a busy couple of weeks for CEA. We're working diligently to insure approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, submitting more than 300,000 positive comments to the Department of State on their final environmental impact statement. Positive comments like these will help both the Department of State and the President understand just how much Americans want the pipeline built.  We are also working to improve road safety in America's oil fields. Together with the National Tank Truck Carriers Association, the American Trucking Association, and the American Petroleum Institute, we have convened a Trucking Safety Taskforce to address the issues of road and traffic safety in areas of strong energy development like the Eagle Ford region in Texas, the Bakken in North Dakota, and the Marcellus region in Pennsylvania. The Taskforce brings together all parties to discuss ways to reduce traffic accidents and improve safety for consumers. You can read the Taskforce's findings here.  Earlier this month we also hosted 6 coastal governors at a forum at Houston's Offshore Technical Conference to discuss opening up more areas for offshore energy development. Led by Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, the group called for additional access to their states offshore resources and a larger share of offshore revenues as a way to spur local economies and invest in infrastructure.  As we move into the summer months, there is a lot more to come. Stay tuned as we make the voice of the energy consumer heard around the country.          David Holt  President CEA News CEA convenes panel of 6 coastal governors at Houston conference to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with expanding offshore energy production of all kinds.  CEA Executive Vice President, Michael Whatley, urges the Obama Administration to grant the Presidential Permit allowing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline at State Department's public hearing in Grand Isle, Nebraska. CEA quantifies the strong public support of the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrated throughout the State Department's public comment period on the project's draft supplemental environmental review.  CEA facilitates the formation of industry taskforce to improve collaboration between oil and gas producers and the trucking industry. Several recommendations designed to promote improved road safety and traffic management in heavily travelled oil and gas production areas have been established. CEA Welcomes New Member Georgia Chamber of Commerce. In Case You Missed It "Energy Policies Must Support Innovation" Editorial by David Holt in the Houston Chronicle "In the United States, economic growth and opportunity have always been grounded in our technical prowess, our desire to innovate and our ability to effectively use our vast natural resources. From our advancement of Internet and information technology anchored in Silicon Valley, to our expansion of oil and gas drilling technologies here in Texas, our nation's potential to expand into new frontiers is limitless. Federal policies must support that exploration, not impede it.   While remarkable advances in onshore technology have opened up vast fields of oil and natural gas once thought to be unreachable, the future of American energy production lies offshore, not just on land."   Read more here.    "Oil and Gas Field of the Future" April 19, 2013 Houston, TX In conjunction with CEA affiliate, Lime Instruments, CEA-Texas hosted an event on technologies for the oil and gas field of the future. The event began with lunch presentations, and was followed by several exhibits demonstrating technological innovations that will maximize efficiency while minimizing environmental impacts, the conversion of natural gas to compressed natural gas for fracking operations, and technologies driven to address water, air, and safety in the field. Consumer Energy Alliance 2211 Norfolk St. Suite 410 Houston, Texas  77098 info@consumerenergyalliance.org To only receive Calls to Action, you may visit our Subscription Center. View your information at our Profile Center. It is not our intention to send unwanted email. If you don't want our emails you can unsubscribe from this newsletter. © 2013 Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) All Rights Reserved.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.....WHAT A JERK!

Obama and Bloomberg dispose the military and show it...Typical Libtardian Orientation! 

 

 

 

 

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The IRS Wants You

The scandal over politicized tax enforcement is growing.

President Obama famously joked in a college commencement address in 2009 that he could use the IRS to target political enemies but of course he never would. It appears that people at the Internal Revenue Service didn't think he was joking.

That's become clear since IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner admitted on Friday that the agency targeted conservatives for special tax-exempt scrutiny during the 2012 election season. The story has already blossomed into the latest abuse of government power, as documents show the IRS targeted tea party types and groups that specifically opposed the Obama Administration.

According to an appendix to a forthcoming Treasury Inspector General report obtained by the Journal, in June 2011 the IRS expanded its special attention to groups that met the following criteria:

"•'Tea Party,' 'Patriots,' or '9/12 Project' is referenced in the case file.

• Issues include Government spending, Government debt, or taxes.

• Education of the public via advocacy/lobbying to 'make America a better place to live.'

• Statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run."

Good to know our T-men are chasing down those nefarious folks who want to "make America a better place to live."

We've also learned that IRS officials knew about this earlier than they have let on. News reports suggest that Ms. Lerner knew about the targeting of conservatives in June 2011, and perhaps as early as 2010. That's a long time before IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman flatly denied any political targeting when he testified at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing in March 2012.

IRS officials are still claiming that the questions weren't meant to intimidate these groups. But the evidence that the inquiries were political is already voluminous.

The IRS sent questionnaires to conservative groups that included requests for everything from the resumes of directors past and present to whether an employee or employee family member had plans to run for public office. Cincinnati Tea Party founder Justin Binik-Thomas wrote in the Washington Examiner recently that one nonprofit received a questionnaire that demanded that it "Provide details regarding your relationship with Justin Binik-Thomas."

According to the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents some of the IRS targets, the IRS letters did not come only from the Cincinnati office (as Ms. Lerner implied on Friday), but also from IRS offices in Laguna Niguel and El Monte in California as well as from Washington D.C. In addition to intrusive questionnaires, the groups were subjected to unusual delays in obtaining tax-exempt status. Of the law center's 27 clients, 15 were approved, two withdrew out of frustration and 10 are still pending.

Some Democrats took to the airwaves on the weekend to suggest that while the IRS shouldn't have been targeting conservatives, no one was harmed. Former senior White House official and chief Obama politico David Plouffe tweeted that what the IRS did was "dumb and wrong," but that it was "Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $." In Mr. Plouffe's moral universe, all that matters is partisan advantage rather than the apolitical tax enforcement Americans expect of their government.

The harm is in fact real, if hard to measure precisely, because any missive from the IRS is enough to chill political spending and speech. Answering the IRS questionnaires can take hundreds of hours. The Jefferson Area Tea Party dropped its plan to register as a 501(c)(4) to avoid the atmosphere of intimidation.

"Why raise your hand to draw attention to yourself or give them ammunition against you when you don't have to?" spokesman Carol Thorpe told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Who knows how many others decided to sit out the 2012 campaign?

Asked about the IRS news on Monday, Mr. Obama said that "if in fact IRS personnel" targeted conservatives, that would be "outrageous" and those responsible would be held "accountable." That's nice to hear, but he was making conditional what the IRS has already admitted, which is not as bad as what we are learning it really did.

Our Kimberley Strassel reported last year that Idaho businessman and Mitt Romney donor Frank VanderSloot was first maligned publicly by an Obama campaign website as disreputable, and then was mysteriously targeted by the IRS and the Labor Department for audits. The press corps ignored that ugly coincidence and no one to our knowledge was punished.

Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage charged Monday that someone at the IRS leaked its confidential tax data to a gay rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign. In March 2012 the Huffington Post published the names of donors to the pro-marriage group contained in IRS Form 990 Schedule B from 2008. The Human Rights Campaign says it obtained the return from a "whistleblower," but leaking confidential tax information is a crime.

In other words, there is a pattern here. Oppose the Obama Administration or liberal priorities, and you too can become an IRS target. We're glad to see Congress mobilizing in response, including hearing plans by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus and the House Ways and Means Committee that asked the IRS about this in 2012 and received denials. The subpoenas need to fly as thick as those IRS questionnaires.

A version of this article appeared May 14, 2013, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The IRS Wants You.