The Silver Lining in the Ground Zero Mosque Debate
**Written by Doug Powers
Well, this might be one way to get somebody on the left to care about an overbearing tax system.
From the New York Post:
The mosque developers are tax deadbeats.
Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.
El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department.
The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal’s lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site on Park Place. El-Gamal owns the other half but must pay taxes on the entire parcel.
Maybe El-Gamal should take a page from John Kerry by admitting to no wrongdoing, but paying the taxes he owes anyway, and then moving the entire mosque to Nantucket. Let’s put that “religious freedom” thing to a real test by building it on Thurston and Lovey’s front porch.
Some of the ground zero area mosque’s defenders — Pelosi, Obama, Bloomberg, etc. — embrace political philosophies that are the reason the levels of regulation and taxation are higher than a bedbug in Paris Hilton’s “makeup” bag, which increases the likelihood that people will try to dodge them. So it’s a little ironic that those same mosque defenders could in part be the very undoing of the progressive cause célèbre of 2010.
Whatever happens, Sharif El-Gamal has at the very least seemingly qualified himself for a cabinet position in the Obama administration.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Taxes are for the “little” people to pay. Those of us who are not part of the chosen exempt group don’t get to play by the same rules as the rulers.
Gilligan!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve got an idea! Let’s purchase the tax deed until they either pay or we take half the property, then turn it into a Christian church!!!! Waddya think?
Even better: Make it a Synagogue.
I’m waiting for the excuse. . . . .
How about:
“It is against the will of Allah to pay taxes on his house of worship”?
or maybe:
“The chosen ones of Allah do not pay taxes to infidels”?
or possibly:
“We have paid all of the taxes but the money was stolen by the U.S. of Postal Mail-carrying infidels”?
or just fill in the blank:
“You dirty_____ swine _____ infidels who ______ who lay with dogs ______ infidel dog ______ pig, dog, infidel ______, _______, _______, infidel.
ahhhh. that explains the 70 million of tax free debt that the city wants to give them!
Sharif is merely confirming in the minds of the Left that his project is too big to fail and to important to not be built.
The Tim Geithner Mosque and Community Center.
Foreign contractors are sleazy financially, screwing their subs, using shoddy materials, deceitful techniques, and coming up short on every payment required, including tax bills. They stiff the banks and work around every building code requirement they possibly can. If things get tough, they leave the country and nothing can be done. This doesn’t surprise anyone who works with these scumbags. It’s just their way.
Drudge reporting that Obama admits to spending much of his time with his birth certificate plastered to his forehead, just not all of his time.
So how about wearing it once when we can see it? (No, I’m not a birther.)
I’m not a birther, either. I’m a constitutionalist. As a citizen of the United States, I am entitled to know that the person serving as my president, meets the constitutional qualification of Natural Born Citizen.
So far, I have no proof as to where Obama was born. And no one else does, either.
Check his immigration status…if he’s here illegally, then it would make perfect sense…they don’t have to pay for anything, the greatest of which is taxes.
I’m convinced that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii and I really don’t feel like going through this again.
I was just having fun by indulging in the liberal logic of twisting statements out of context to arrive at a contrived self-serving conclusion.
Tax deadbeats. Well, at least they’re qualified to serve on Obama’s cabinet.
Turbo Tax is a Jewish conspiracy to incriminate all Muslims in America. Or something like that. Wait for it.
How long have they been allowing members of the death cult to worship there? You suppose he thinks it’s already a mosque and entitled to ummm, certain tax breaks? Will only 1/2 of it being a mosque allow them to take the stand that it’s all a mosque and get a reduction – skirting the law again? Or, does that matter for property tax laws and houses of worship?
Apparently, back taxes are the least of Sharif El-Gamal’s problems -
1.
2.
3.
4.
All are “moderate” crimes, of course.
I knew it!
Hmmm. Let’s see. I use TurboTax and they wouldn’t let me into that country club. I’ll bet it’s related. Think I have a case?
Or it could be this:
“I wouldn’t want to join a club that would accept me as a member.”
– Groucho Marx
If we could just find a case where Shorty Al-Gumball kept a woman from having an abortion, then we’d find out exactly how the liberals really feel about this mosque.
Having left NYS 5 years ago, at least now I can observe this idiocy from afar, without feeling embarrassed to live in such a moronic State.
I feel the same why you guys do, but I don’t feel the need to say, “I am not a birther”. I don’t get it? Clearly, Obama has never proven he is eligible to be president. I believe in the Constitution and I believe Obama must provide proof that he is a natural born citizen. If the Obots want to call me a “birther” for that, fine, I’m proud to be a birther.
If it turned out that the entire gang from the proposed Ground Zero Mosque had outed Valerie Plame…Liberals would still be riding this “wedge issue.”
Don’t tell them, but the only group of Americans they’re giving a wedgie to is themselves.
In my mind he has proven he is NOT eligible.
His father was NEVER an American Citizen.
He has admitted to being a dual citizen (British/Kenyan) at birth.
No matter where he was born, he is NOT a Natural Born Citizen in the context of Article II, Section 1.
The courts just don’t have the guts to say what is obvious.
I agree with you, I was just pointing out how sensitive people are about being called a “birther”, even if they too question Obama’s eligibility. It points out how well the Obot’s have used Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to try to get people to shut up on Obama’s rather obvious lack of eligibility to be president.
I am not a birther because I am convinced that Obama was born in Hawaii. Nothing Alinsky about it.
I take “birther” to include any problem with Obama’s eligibility, of which there are many…but I also have seen no proof that he was born in Hawaii.
Yep, paying taxes and your fair share only applies to the little people.
And since we are on the subject……
Has there ever been a politcian, in the last 30 years or so, that has blocked and/or restricted access to their past documents to the extent that BHO has?
That in itself should raise questions.
Mayor Mike Memorial Mosque and Sharia Finance Center.
Soros has the bill covered. Otherwise MTV-CBS-ABC-NBC-MSNBC-CNN will hold a live telethon over the next 6 months to cover the delinquent taxes.
How do they (rangel-el-gamal and et.al.) get away w/NOT paying their taxes!?!!!
Non of us can!
Our properties would be seized by our government ‘royals’!
$224,000 ! and he got clearance to build a ‘finger in our eye’ mosque!!!!!
carol-CS
To me, the silver lining is that the longer the left keeps fighting for the mosque the more voters they turn off. I hope it stays on the front page until November.
Here’s a cute bit of information.
Ground Zero Muslim center may get public financing
Separation of church and state?
There’s also the bit where Gov. Patterson wanted to give them state land so that they would build somewhere else.
here;s the link
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41251.html
Does the mean that ConEdison could void the lease with EL-G? Is this a way out of this for us??? Any lawyers or New Yawkas with ideas??
Everything coming out of OBambi, his Court of Jesters, the Left, Muslim Morons, the MSM, is a lie. Nothing is as described nor portrayed. So, Why would any reasonable person accept anything these liars offer up as accurate, true, undeniable, or beyond question? That includes everything OBambi is, may be, or involved with in any fashion.
Furthermore: El-Gamal owes $21,000 in taxes on his own property, and commited 13 property violations while it was being re-developed.
It is also interesting to note that Mr. El-Gamal has quite the police rap sheet, including the solicitation of a prostitute, and multiple assault and battery charges; he has been quoted as saying:
“..when you beat up someone physically you get exercise & stress relief…”
Phil; I too am convinced our secretive pres was born in Hawaii, but because I know his father was already married to a Kenyan woman, and Hawaii was a state of the U.S. when he was born, he is a bastard, literally and figuratively. Also, I would like a ruling on whether when his mother (legal guardian) took him to Indonesia as a child (nonemancipated minor)did she give up his legal citizenship in the U.S. to get him into the exclusive muslim school in Indonesia?
Apparently I’m a birther and a racist. (yawn)
Mildred: What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddya got?
… a lot of things.
The American people have been sold a bill of goods. Generations from now Americans will wonder how we could have been so willfully blind.
slight OT…
But did it bother anyone else that when asked about his purported Muslimism, Obama responded with a (assumedly supposed by him witty) answer about his forehead and birth certificate? He wasn’t asked about that….
Imam Rauf is a slumlord. Now I know how he affords three homes and the fancy cars for going to and fro.
The story of this “mosque” and the people involved in it is like “alice in Wonderland”. A waiter plunks down 5 million bucks for this building, but doesn’t pay his taxes. The imam and his wife are closet wahabists, speaking one thing in english and a totally different thing in arabic. The guy who supposedly gave the money to the waiter amasses a fortune doing what in New York. This whole thing stinks like the streets Cairo.
Being a Muslim does not have the potential to have him almost immediately removed from office, so it’s not on his mind like some “other” things.
Roland and I finally agree on something.
Of course the good Imam said that America was the most Sharia Compliant country…Here is compliance.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/08/27/sharia-for-dummies/