Shrillary : Gas taxes and "Chinagate" and Ron Brown's assassination revisited

How dumb Shrillary is cannot be better defined than her insane proposal to knock off the Federal Gas sales tax of 18.4 cents per gallon (US gallon = 3.785 litres Imperial (UK) EU gallon =
4.55 litres). A proposal that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama does not support. he says quite correctly this is merely a political “gimmick” that would at best save drivers about 30 cents a day -- and only if the oil companies don’t use the headroom to allow them to raise prices.

She appeared on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos" at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Indianapolis and was pressed by him to name a single economist who supports her plan Shrillary replied that commuters, truck drivers and other gas customers know it would make a difference.

“We have to get out of the mindset where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans,” .......“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists because I know if we did it right ... we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.”

Asked how the proposal squared with her concerns about energy independence and global warming she said that such short term relief (ie, until we've had an election) doesn't mean she isn't advocating long-term solutions to gas prices and energy independence, including making vehicles more fuel efficient and having the United States be a world leader on addressing global warming.

It should be pointed out here that the US federal fuel tax is hypothecated , that is its revenue is directed soley to the maintenance of interstate highways, roadworks , bridges etc., that is to the benefit of the peopel actually paying the tax - as the recent collapse of a major road bridge shows, any reduction in effort or expenditure in this direction would be stupid as the woman who suggests cutting income to zero.

A highly local issue which Shrillary has been raising in TV ads concerns a Valparaiso (North Indiana) based ex GM company called Magnequench that that makes magnets for smart bombs (amongst other things) that moved plant to China in 2003 but was sold to a Chinese consortium San Huan Group Inc. for $70 Mn. by GM in 1995 when her husband was in charge of the pig trough.

“The sale was approved with the condition that the jobs stay in Indiana,” Shrillary maintained, “The plan was that those jobs would always stay in Indiana because those magnets were part of our precision guided missile.”

This revives the stink of" Chinagate" at the time of Shrillarys (successful) senate bid in 2000 when it was revealed she had insisted that Johnny Huang be given a position at the Commerce Department under Ron Brown (the first black ever to hold the post, appointed 1993). She was also quizzed but never answered about her relationship with the Lippo Group Norhas she made any public comment regarding her relationship with the Lippo Group, a firm owned by Indonesian billionaire Moctar Riady, a buddy of President Suharto famous for his human rights record.

It was the same Johnny Huang, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to federal charges of making illegal political contributions to the Clinton/Gore campaign, who had joined the U.S. Commerce Department after leaving a much higher paying job with the Lippo Group. Johnny was also placed on a Commerce Department contract that allowed him to retain his security clearance by Charles Meissner(an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Economic Policy) after Ron Brown died. Shortly thereafter, Meissner died in the crash of a small plane.

Then there was Ted Sioeng the 51-year-old Indonesian and close friend of Mochtar and James Riady who was connected with China's largest cigarette manufacturer who gave the Democratic National Committee accepted at least $400,000 - which enabled Ted to sit next to Billy Boy and Al Gore at fund raisers.

There were others involved in "Chinagate" as well, Charlie Trie, Hara Hsia, Wang Jun , COSTIND, the Chinese Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense and the name of Ron Brown always cropped up.

Especially in the headlines , as when he flew to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the neo-fascist strongman who ran Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, and the late lamented Enron Corporation and died in a mysterious crash of a USAF plane along with 34 other people on 3rd April 1996 it crashed on approaching Dubrovnik airport but initial reports said it crashed in the Adriatic. Curiously the exact same plane (The T43A plane, with a tail number of 1149, was based at the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany) that Shrillary had flown in on her trip to Tuzla days earlier (March 25th) with Chelsea when she had to dodge sniper fire.

Brown had a bullet hole in his head so it was decided an autopsy and inquest would only delay burial which was done on April 10th and Billy Boy was famously caught laughing his head off on video (here). ...and frame by frame here





remarkably ..or not.. the X rays have been ...er..."lost" Lots more